


Fire Drills

by isozyme



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol, Cadmium Sure Is Poisonous!!!, Canon Divergence - Iron Man 2, Crossdressing, Dirty Talk, Engineering And Chemistry Pedantry, Eve Rogers Does A Spy Mission, F/F, Face-Sitting, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderbending, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, Non-Consensual Body Modification (Offscreen), Oral Sex, Palladium Is Not Poisonous!!!, Panic Attacks, Rule 63, Scarring, Suicidal Thought Patterns, Tonia Stark Tries Not To Die, Undercover identity, body issues, eating pussy, fingerbanging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 01:35:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17194007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isozyme/pseuds/isozyme
Summary: Tonia Stark is the Iron Mantle.  She's also dying of cadmium poisoning, fending off competition from HammerTech, dealing with the nasty leftovers of her father's legacy, and taking care of Eve Rollins, one of Rhodey's Air Force friends who needs a place to stay.An Iron Man 2 Genderswap AU where Nick Fury sends Eve Rogers to spy on Tonia Stark instead of Natasha Romanov.





	Fire Drills

**Author's Note:**

> This AU closely follows the Iron Man 2 movie plot with a couple key changes.
> 
> Eve's name and some of her characterization were inspired by [Genesis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5460221) by teaberryblue. It's a great fic, go read it!
> 
> Title from [Fire Drills](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMsRew_uTDA) by Dessa.
> 
> Thanks to Hopelesse and Inglorian for the beta work!
> 
> See end notes for additional content warnings. There's some sensitive stuff that's difficult to tag for without including spoilers, so please check if you're worried.

* * *

Tonia Stark comes out of the desert with a thrumming hunk of glowing metal in her chest, two angry red scars where her tits should be, and the giddy memory of flying.

* * *

 

“Welcome to the grand re-imagining of the Stark Expo,” Tonia said, throwing her hands wide, beaming into the crowd. They roared, enamored with every part of her. “A new age, a new paradigm: every single thing you’ll see here was designed by a woman. Now, I’m not discriminating, I’m just facing facts. Homeboys, you’re inferior. The female mind is, frankly, just more flexible, more resilient, more inquisitive. And if you want proof, here it is.”

An angry hiss grew beneath the cheers, and Tonia soaked it up. _Hate me, hate the truth, baby: I don’t care. You won’t miss me when I’m gone._

Tonia unbuttoned the first four buttons of her shirt, baring the arc reactor, nestled between her non-existent cleavage. “World peace! Clean energy! No more global warming, folks! I’m the future!” She kissed her fingertips and pressed them onto the smooth face of the reactor, then held them up in a peace sign.

Unbidden, her heart shrieked to a halt in her chest, sending pain shooting into her jaw, then thudded to life again like it was turning itself inside-out. Tonia doubled over, barely recovering to turn it into a bow. She had to get off stage.

Tonia trotted hastily backstage. Then she unmuted her headset. Immediately, Pepper’s furious voice blasted her ear. “Tonia, what the hell? You can’t do that, there’s—oh Lord, FemiNaziStark is trending on Twitter already—there’s _consequences_ when you spout off like that.”

“All press is good press,” Tonia cooed. “I’m staying in the global digital consciousness.”

“SI stock is going to open at least five points down tomorrow.”

“It’ll go back up again. Now, I need you to go out there and finish the opening ceremony for me,” Tonia said.

“What?” Pepper yelled. “Tonia, that is not my job! You have thirty more minutes to fill. What are you doing?”

“I have women to fuck and liquor to drink,” Tonia said. “I love you, you’ll do great.” Then she muted the headset again. Bathroom, she needed to find a bathroom and—she wasn’t sure, put water on her face? That was a thing people did when their body did something terrifying.

The bathroom was empty. Tonia rubbed a hand through her hair, making it stick up in gelled spikes. The arc reactor glared in her reflection like a blue Eye of Sauron.

The problem was cadmium. It was absolutely essential as an intermediary to hold the oscillating charges of the arc reactor, but she was burning through her capacitor cores every two weeks. It was getting into her blood. The heavy metal poisoning was quickly moving from a chronic problem that Tonia was going to solve to an acute problem that was going to kill her. She’d lost her sense of smell, then the feeling in her fingertips, and then her bones had started to ache.

The cadmium would come for her heart, brain, and kidneys next.

Tonia’d made a hand-held device that could do sixteen blood tests from a single finger prick. It was headed out to hospitals in Cameroon within the next eight months. Theranos could eat shit and die. When Tonia Stark made something, it _worked._ Unfortunately for Tonia, now she was using it on herself, a countdown clock to death-by-heavy-metal.

Tonia fished the slim rectangle out of her pocket and stuck her finger. It chirred as it processed, then beeped that it was finished. Twenty-four. Twenty-four percent of the way to cadmium’s LD50. Tonia hung her head over the bathroom sink, trying to breathe. Last week it had been nineteen.

“You look like a hag,” she accused her reflection.

 _Well, I’m dying_ , it thought back at her.

“Touché.”

 

* * *

Tonia donates the art collection to Planned Parenthood. She makes Pepper CEO of Stark Industries. She gives Happy a bonus that’ll cover the rest of the mortgage on his house. Tonia asks her the computer vision and machine learning department at MIT if they have space for a few more robots.

* * *

 

The beauty of an engine was that if Tonia spent enough time inside of one all the thoughts in her head went non-verbal. The processing power in her brain switched over from words to something more efficient, providing a 3D render of every part she wanted, spinning them and slotting them together before she even had them in her hands. If she got deep enough into making a car go _fast_ then she couldn’t think about death.

See, there she went, thinking about it again.

Tonia wrapped her hand around the drive shaft of the Firebird and cranked it, watching the pistons glide smoothly up and down. Significant improvement, good.

It was hot in the garage, so Tonia stripped off her shirt and used it to mop the sweat off the back of her neck. “Hey, JARVIS, give me a proximity alert for anyone within two floors so nobody has to see my non-existent boobs.”

“Of course, Ms. Stark.”

“And turn up the music loud enough to give me hearing damage.”

Rhodey called while Tonia was upside-down under the dash, re-wiring all of the dials. She’d considered replacing it all with digital screens, but physical dials were so charmingly retro, she couldn’t help herself. The music cut itself off and Tonia rolled upright, picking up her phone and hitting the answer button without really looking at it.

“ _Tonia,_ ” Rhodey said, scandalized, and Tonia took a more careful look at the screen. It was a video call, darn. Tonia grimaced and looked at her chest. No visible grey stains from the metal spreading under her skin, so it was just the tits bothering Rhodey. That was fine. Tonia extracted herself from the disassembled driver’s seat and grabbed the cadmium-chelating smoothie that was making up eighty percent of her caloric intake these days.

“You’ve seen worse, Rhodes.”

“There is not enough bleach in the world to erase worse,” he said. “I need a favor.”

 _I need a favor._ Tonia’s four least favorite words. That wasn’t true, actually, she could think of way worse. _My daughter’s a dyke. Build the Jericho missile._ _Don’t waste your life_. _One last golden egg._ Bad train of thought. _Get with the program, Stark, Rhodey’s talking_.

“I have an Air Force friend who needs a place to stay for a few weeks,” Rhodey said.

Tonia wiped grease on her sweats. “And you called me? _Me?_ You know, when I do charity I think big, I think build a hospital, fund a network of women’s shelters, renovate an entire school district. Not couch-surfing.”

“You owe me. She’s between tours and I want her with someone I trust. Eve—she needs an eye on her. I trust you, T.”

Tonia sighed and took a swig from her smoothie. It tasted like lawnmower clippings and salt. Rhodey was a manipulative dick. “On one condition.”

“What?” Rhodey sounded immeasurably tired. Tonia brought that out in him.

“Is she hot?”

Rhodey groaned. “Tonia, don’t be like that. Eve’s a friend. Like a sister. You wouldn’t fuck my sister, would you?”

“Already have, pumpkin. What do you think that last trip to Philly was for?”

“My sister moved to Columbus for graduate school three years ago.”

“Oops,” Tonia said, sugar-sweet. “So, what I’m getting from this is that Eve is very hot, in the biblical sense, and I am going to say yes.”

“Eve’s straight,” Rhodey warned.

“Lots of women who haven’t met me are straight,” Tonia sang, and hung up.

 

* * *

The government keeps trying to take the armor away from her. Tonia spits on the floor of the Senate chambers. _Second amendment, motherfuckers,_ she says, wiping her mouth. _If you want to call my suit a weapon, then it’s my right as an American to keep it._

* * *

 

Eve arrived while Tonia was mid-workout, half-assing her way through a kickboxing routine. There wasn’t a lot of purpose to it, now; her cardiovascular health was fucked seven ways to Sunday, for a variety of reasons, and no amount of Jazzercise was going to fix that.

Still, she kept doing it. It would look weird if she stopped exercising. It felt good to hit things. She’d hit forty-three percent that morning.

The doorbell camera popped open on the gym television. Eve had long blonde hair that was tied back in a ponytail. Her back was ramrod straight, and the only luggage she was carrying was a moderately-sized black duffel bag in one hand and a strange flat case that could have been an artist’s portfolio.

“JARVIS, buddy, guide our Air Force friend over to the gym, yeah? I want to say hi.”

Tonia checked herself over. She was sweaty, fine, but her recently engineered line of hyper-waterproof makeup was holding steady. She looked good. Maybe a little too covered up in an oversized sweatshirt. She’d been getting cold easily these days. Tonia stripped down to her thin cotton tank. Much better; the arc reactor glowed right through the fabric.

Eve walked into the gym peering around at the ceiling, like she was still looking for where JARVIS was coming from.

“Down here,” Tonia called. Eve stuffed her hands in her pockets and looked at her. Her grey t-shirt said Air Force on the chest, and it stretched deliciously across her shoulders. “Tonia Stark,” she said, waving at herself.

“Eve Ro—Rollins,” Eve said.

“C’mere, Rollins,” Tonia said, pacing over to the sparring mats in the center of the room. “Help me finish this workout. You do Judo?”

“Something like that,” Eve said, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Tonia was going to _like_ her. Maybe she wouldn’t even give Rhodey that much shit for this favor.

“Rhodey says I have to watch you,” Tonia said, circling Eve, looking for an opening and checking her out. Multitasking. Eve had a great ass, amazing back muscles (Tonia wanted to _lick_ them, was that a reaction she was supposed to have to trapezius muscles?), and the kind of hard blue eyes that would practically glow in the right light. “He made it sound serious. So what is it? PTSD? Hooked on hard drugs? You looking to take a swan dive off a cliff and miss the water by a few miles?”

Eve flinched at the last one, then gritted her teeth.

“Ding ding ding—it’s door number three, folks,” Tonia said lowly, watching for another flinch.

Instead Eve ducked past Tonia’s guard, almost too fast for Tonia to track, and slapped her over the ear with a cupped hand. Before Tonia’s eyes even had a chance to water, Eve had her in an arm bar, forcing her around until Tony was halfway slung across Eve’s hip.

“Ow, ow ow ow,” Tonia said, going limp. She just needed Eve to let up for a second and she could break out of this hold.

Instead of loosening, Eve pushed harder. Tonia went down on her knees, her face tipping down into the mat, Eve’s hands hard and warm on her wrist and shoulder. Eve bent over her, holding firm. “Yield,” Eve growled in Tonia’s ear.

 _Choose your battles, Tonia_ , her good sense whispered. Any farther and she’d have a dislocated elbow. Tonia slapped twice on the mat with her free hand. Eve let her go in stages, first her shoulder, then her wrist, then stood and rocked on her heels. Tonia rolled onto her back and threw her less-sore arm over her eyes.

“Sorry,” Eve said. Tonia peeked out from under her forearm, and Eve almost looked sheepish. She hadn’t meant to go that hard on Tonia.

“It’s okay,” Tonia said. “I have that effect on people. Call it a character flaw.”

Eve held out a hand, and Tonia took it, swinging to her feet with a grunt. Eve lifted her like Tonia weighed basically nothing. Tonia thought she was in shape, but compared to Eve she felt like a wobbly little duckling. Tonia swallowed and ran her tongue over her lips.

Eve still had her hand, watching Tonia’s face, her cheeks dotted with delicate red. _Straight, Rhodey says_ , Tonia thought. _Straight my ass._

 

* * *

 

Tonia thought about leaving JARVIS to show Eve around the mansion; she had enough work to occupy a whole floor of cubicle rats for a month. But Eve looked absolutely _starved_ for human contact. She stood a little too close to Tonia, and followed her a half-pace behind as she crossed the gym to grab a water bottle.

So, personal tour it was.

“You want modern and stainless chic or modern and glass chic?” Tonia asked, as Eve trailed her through the main part of the house.

“This is all very...futuristic,” Eve said, lifting the end of the last word like she wasn’t quite sure about it.

Tonia shrugged. “If you wanted traditional homey comfort you’re out of luck, the New York mansion is where I have that. The place in Dubai has a sort of airy mosaic-y vibe, that’s very nice. I could send you there, I guess. I’m supposed to be looking after you but I could hire you some friends to do that. Well, I could have Pepper have HR hire you some friends. I’m sure we have resumes lined up for that kind of thing.”

“No!” Eve almost shouted. Then she winced. “No,” she repeated, more calmly. “Chic is fine.”

Tonia frowned, then hid it quickly from Eve, smoothing herself back into an unruffled hostess demeanor that would have done her mother proud. She was doing the thing again, the thing where she forgot how humans worked.

“I’ll put you on the second floor, by the sunroom. There’s houseplants, a fountain. Comfortable. Good windows.”

JARVIS piped up, ever helpful. “Would you like me to assign the locks for that suite to Ms. Rollins’s biometrics, ma’am?”

Eve looked up at the ceiling reflexively again. Tonia waved a hand at JARVIS. “Yeah, usual safe search parameters on all the electronics. And shift the lighting a little more warm-spectrum, take the hard edges off. Thanks buddy.”

“I feel like I should meet Jarvis. To be polite, if he’s going to be helping,” Eve said.

“Oh,” Tonia said. She’d done it again. Tonia Stark coded friends, built friends, hired friends, bought friends, but she didn’t make friends. “JARVIS is a computer program; you’ve already met all the him there is to meet. He runs the house. J, say hello.”

“Hello, Eve,” JARVIS said gently.

“Hello,” Eve said, and that was that, introductions done.

Tonia showed Eve the bathrooms, introduced her to the kitchen Tonia didn’t use for anything but making smoothies, and hooked her cell up to JARVIS. There were hardly any apps on the (non-StarkTech) phone Eve handed over, which was odd. Tonia hoped Rhodey hadn’t sent her a luddite.

“Anything else?” Tonia asked, drumming her fingertips restlessly against the arc reactor. “You have things to do? You need someone to drive you anywhere? Because Happy -- ”

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” Eve said quickly.

Tonia wondered if Eve knew how sad that sounded. “Hey, that’s cool, you can take a spa day. You can take a spa month, no skin off my back.”

Eve hunched her beautiful muscled shoulders. Maybe she did know how sad it sounded.

“Don’t off yourself,” Tonia said. “Come with me to Monaco next week instead.”

 

* * *

 

Tonia sat in her workshop and surveyed the four arc reactor prototypes arrayed before her. Three of the four were dark; they’d ended up too unstable to run for more than a few hours at a time. The fourth was the one with the lithium core, but it was starting to flicker and fade after only three days. It was also emitting a high, grating whine.

She stripped off her grease-stained hoodie, wrapped the whining core in it, and then chucked the whole frustrating bundle across the room.

“Fuck fucking fuck fuck and God _damn_ it to hell! JARVIS?”

“Yes, Ms. Stark?”

“Have you run those catalytic kinetics simulations for all the elements? I need those, now please.”

JARVIS tossed a blue screen up in front of her. “Buddy, come on, this is only like a hundred tests,” Tonia said.

“Ma’am, there are only one hundred and eighteen elements. Of the omitted twenty elements, several are radioactive enough to kill you in minutes, and at least one is still purely hypothetical.”

“Fine. Let’s get _creative_ , J. Lets get _combinatorial._ If single elements are out that just means I need an alloy!” She snapped her fingers at the ceiling. Eve was rubbing off on her, always looking up for JARVIS.

“Projected computation time three point seven hours.”

“Make it two!”

“I will do everything possible to accommodate that request.”

“That’s JARVIS-speak for _we’ll get there when we get there_ , isn’t it? I’ll replace you with the Cal Tech supercomputing cluster, don’t push me.”

“I’m shaking in my proverbial footwear, Ma’am.”

“Yeah, yeah. What am I going to do for three hours?”

“Ms. Rollins has been pacing in your living room for the past half hour. Perhaps it would be prudent to keep her company for a while.”

“Aw, shit,” Tonia said under her breath. Louder, to JARVIS, “ask her to come on down here then. I need to fabricate another housing for the next test model anyway, there’ll be lots of impressive sparks. Tell her it’ll be educational or something.”

“Of course.”

Tonia set about gathering ingots of scrap aluminum to chuck into the furnace and melt to cast herself a new blank for the lathe.

By the time Eve arrived in the workshop, the aluminum was a quicksilver bright and Tonia was stirring it around the crucible with a spare iron bolt held in a pair of pliers, checking for clumps.

“Well this is certainly a standard basement activity,” Eve said dryly as she took in the vista.

Tonia snorted. “This is backyard campfire shit. Any kid with a cast iron skillet and some tin cans could do this part.”

“Oh sure,” Eve said, smiling. “We played with molten metal all the time around the campfire.”

One last stir, and Tonia was satisfied that her aluminum was properly melted. She handed Eve a blowtorch and kicked the mold she planned to use in her direction.

“Heat that up for me, will you?”

Eve proved herself perfectly handy with a hot flame, which shouldn’t have been a turn-on but definitely was. When Tonia called that it was ready, Eve backed away, standing close enough to see what was happening but far enough that Tonia wouldn’t bump into her. Tony grasped the crucible in long tongs and poured it out, splashing quickly-freezing droplets of aluminum into the pre-heated mold.

When it was filled, Tonia tossed her tongs to the side and stripped off her gloves.

“What are you making?” Eve asked, leaning in close behind Tonia.

“Another one of these,” Tonia said, tapping the arc reactor.

Eve tilted her head to the side. “Is that one not—“

“It’s good to have spares,” Tonia said quickly. Tonia learned that one the hard way. She remembered—paralyzed and gasping on the couch, _her couch_ , she hadn’t thought it would happen in her own house, she hadn’t thought it would be Obie, and then when he tore away a different part of her instead—Tonia wasn’t thinking this. She was going to stop, think something else. Eve, with her hard blue eyes and her square-knuckled hands.

“Can I touch it?”

Tonia stifled a flinch. The reactor-touching green-light list was four people long: Ho Yinsen, Pepper Pots, James Rhodes, Tonia Stark.

Tonia wanted Eve to touch her again, and Tonia was great at opening herself up for pain.

“Sure, go for it. Smudge it all up, I’ll windex myself later.” Tonia pulled down the neck of her tank top, offering.

Eve’s eyes flicked up to meet Tonia’s, then dropped to the arc reactor. She licked her lips and hovered her fingertips over Tonia’s chest. Blue light bounced off her hand.

Tonia expected Eve to trace around the edges first, maybe brush against her skin to feel the place where metal joined flesh, but Eve surprised her. She laid the flat of her hand across the face of the reactor, covering it with her palm.

“It’s warm,” Eve said, soft with wonder.

“It hurts if it gets cold.” Tonia hadn’t meant to reveal that weakness.

“This is incredible,” Eve said, tilted up at the end like it was a question. “Nobody else…nobody else has one of these, right?”

“Just me,” Tonia said, trying not to lean too much into Eve’s palm. The pressure shifted the reactor housing minutely, sending a stutter all the way into her heart. Tonia let out a small, involuntary noise, halfway between discomfort and pleasure.

Eve blushed, color crawling across her cheeks, and seemed to realize that she had her hand smack in the middle of Tonia’s chest. “Uh, sorry, if that made you, um, uncomfortable.”

“No,” Tonia said, a little too breathy. She tried to turn her smile into something predatory, fitting of Tonia Stark, incorrigible chaser of lesbian tail.

Eve drew her hand away, fingers trailing across the front of the reactor, like she was reluctant to leave it.

“It matches your eyes, you know,” Tonia said, with a wink.

“Oh,” Eve said. “Yeah, I—I guess it does.”

 

* * *

 

Tonia swept into the VIP lounge in Monaco five days later with Pepper on her arm. “You didn’t,” Pepper hissed in her ear.

“I did.” Eve was standing by the bar, looking lost. She cleaned up nice, in a men’s blazer, slacks, and a shimmery blue top that brought out her eyes. Her hair was down. Tonia liked it.

“You can’t bring Rhodey’s traumatized veteran friend out on one of your poorly-timed junkets.”

“Can and did. Eve!”

Eve stood up, her spine snapping straight like a slide rule. Tonia had taught herself to use a slide rule despite having calculators and computers at her fingertips all her life. If the slide rule was good enough to get a man to space and back again, she wanted to understand it. Tonia was going to make a suit that could orbit the earth and survive re-entry.

Maybe that would be how she went out. When her body gave in to the cadmium poisoning, she’d screw herself into a suit and launch into the void, see how far she could get. The receptors in her lungs would only tell her she was suffocating if they sensed an uptick in carbon dioxide. Tonia could game that system. If she kept a tank of nitrogen handy, she could flood the atmosphere with that and fade out painlessly.

“Selfie,” Tonia said, drawing Eve in close to her side and holding up her phone. Eve’s smile was tentative, vulnerable, and boy did Eve ever wear her emotions right out on her face. “I’ll take care of you. Let’s watch my fast car. Just do as I do, and ignore anyone who tries to schmooze,” Tonia whispered in Eve’s ear.

“Justin Hammer, your three o’clock,” Pepper said. “Too late, he’s spotted you. Don’t start a fight.”

“Tonia! What a pleasure!”

“Really not, actually,” Tonia said, dodging a hug.

“Who’s the beauty on your arm? _Hello_ , pretty lady. Tonia and I go way back, we’re great friends, I’m sure she’s told you about me.”

Eve’s open face was swiftly becoming a liability. She looked like she wanted to deck Hammer and wasn’t hiding it. “Eve Rollins,” Eve growled, holding out a hand.

Hammer shook Eve’s hand and then blanched. There was a popping noise and something odd happened to his thumb. For a moment, Tonia thought she might get to live out one of her fantasies—watching Justin Hammer cry in public. Then his mouth twisted into an awful treacle smile. “Wow, strong grip on your friend here. You know what they say about women with strong hands— “ Hammer said, and then he dropped his voice to nothing and mouthed: _lesbian._

Pepper grabbed Tonia by the elbow before she could do anything that wouldn’t play well on TV. “Lovely to see you, Justin. We’re going to go now. Tonia, I want you to talk to Elon Musk, he’s right over there, see him? By the window. Tonia, we’re walking, _right now_. Eve, you too.”

Tonia’s heart twisted like it was a horse bucking a cougar off of its back. She tried to pick up a champagne flute from server with a passing tray; her fingers were too numb to grip the narrow stem. She dropped it.

Eve snatched the falling glass. It didn’t even spill.

“I need air,” Tonia gasped. She passed Eve over to Pepper. Eve tried to pass Tonia’s champagne back to her and Tonia dodged it. “Keep it.”

“She doesn’t like to be handed things,” Pepper explained, rolling her eyes. “One of Tonia’s many charming traits.”

Even outside, Tonia felt like she was dying. The thrum of dragster engines pressed on her eardrums like cotton wool. She checked the cadmium content of her blood. Seventy one. _Living on borrowed time, Stark._ She’d been living on the time she borrowed from Ho Yinsen since Afghanistan. Too bad she was squandering it. The acid rush of self-hatred on the heels of that thought practically consumed her.

“Fuck it, let’s do something stupid,” Tonia said to the humid air.

 

* * *

The driver she pulls out of the Stark-branded dragster swears and calls her a cunt. It’s her car. She’s Tonia Stark. She can do whatever she fucking wants.

* * *

 

Tonia knew things were really, truly going pear-shaped when one of the pit crew burned his jumpsuit off his back and started to glow with lightning.

“Hey! Rude!” she shouted as he cut her car in half.

Armor, armor, she needed the armor right away. _C’mon, Iron Mantle, do your job, pull my ass out of the fire_. It was going to be literal fire in a few seconds, given how her fuel tank was leaking. Time to move.

Instead she hung upside-down in her flipped car as Eve tore through the chain-link fence fifty feet in front of Tonia’s wreck. That was weird. Tonia was huffing gasoline fumes in a serious way, but people couldn’t just rip fences like that. Eve had stripped off her blazer and shiny top to reveal a skin-hugging kevlar vest, and she was running full-tilt towards the mess.

Then Eve punched Mr. Chops Up Tonia’s Nice Car in the side of the head, hard.

He went down like a sack of bricks. Eve reached down, ripped a glowing disc off the man’s chest—one that looked an awful lot like Tonia’s arc reactor, and crushed it between her fingers.

“That was anticlimactic,” Tonia said dryly, mostly for her own benefit.

Then the racetrack bloomed into flame around her.

“Tonia!” Pepper screamed, because, hey, the gang was all here.

The fire-proofing in her drive-suit would hold for another thirty seconds or so, and Tonia’s fingers were slipping on the catches that would release her safety harness. The culprit was a tossup between cadmium poisoning and shock. Then Eve was there, dancing through a gap in the flames to wrench Tonia out of the driver’s seat.

“What is _wrong_ with you!” That was Pepper.

Eve spun Tonia around, causing her to squawk in protest, then stripped Tonia of her jacket. In another situation it would have been sexy but instead it was confusing and involved a lot of tearing re-enforced kevlar.

Then Eve dropped the jacket onto the pavement and stomped on it, which meant, oh, Tonia had been on fire. That made sense.

“You know,” Eve said evenly, “I’m the one who’s supposed to have a death wish.”

“Well I couldn’t let you have all the glory, could I, honeybun?”

Pepper was still yelling, and Happy was yelling, and Eve had a grip on her arm so tight it was cutting off Tonia’s circulation. It was going to hurt these people when she died.

Tonia didn’t know what to do about that.

 

* * *

 In his dirty cell Vanko tells her that he doesn’t have to kill her to win. He just has to make God bleed. _I’m a woman. We’re all already bleeding,_ Tonia replies.

* * *

 

Eve fell asleep on the jet home. Tonia wasn’t going to make her fly commercial after her she tore Tonia out of a burning car like a genuine damsel in distress.

In sleep, Eve looked like a marble statue. Her face was luminous in the light of the sun setting behind the clouds. Eve softened around the eyes when she slept, but her jaw was still sharp enough to cut glass. Her features were heavily carved in a way that wasn’t attractive to men; she was tall and stubborn and had none of the frailty that drew in the most common breeds of creep.

Tonia wanted Eve to sit on her face. Eve would be beautiful with her hands braced against Tonia’s headboard, her strong thighs shaking with restraint, and Tonia could lose herself in sex. Tonia wouldn’t be able to think while fucking Eve. Tonia was a good fuck, as long as you weren’t a tits man. She could use her body to make Eve forget whatever black dog was chasing her, too.

Unfortunately, Tonia didn’t deserve Eve. Eve’s baggage came from being a good person and probably a war hero. Tonia’s baggage came from being an arrogant bitch who let people die.

“Stop thinking about having sex with Eve,” Pepper scolded.

“She’s just so hot,” Tonia protested.

“Stop.”

“I was going to make you an omelette,” Tonia said.

Pepper raised her eyebrows but rolled with the topic change. “Why?”

“Apology. Maybe? I can do better than that, though. I’ll take you on vacation. There’s amazing natural hot springs in New Zealand, I love New Zealand. They’re stress-relieving.”

“Now’s really not the time—“

“No, no, see, that’s why it’s exactly the time. We can take Eve, you can make fun of me for being totally gone for her, we can, I don’t know, go on a hike. Eve will like hikes.”

“The company is in a lot of trouble, and I’m still catching up, I have a whole folder of contacts to memorize—“

“A spa would be relaxing, there’s minerals—“

“Tonia,” Pepper said, like Tonia had drained all the energy out of her. Tonia Stark: former weapons tycoon, current emotional vampire.

Tonia reached out like she could push the life back into Pepper’s face. That wasn’t the right thing to do either, so she aborted that mission and tried to make it look natural, leaning one wrist against her forehead, gesturing vaguely.

“I really care about you, Pep.”

Pepper narrowed her eyes. Tonia had a bad habit of using that phrase before asking Pepper to forgive her for something truly irritating. She was doing this wrong. Unsurprising. Tonia was shit at this kind of thing. “No, look, you’re—you’re family. I don’t have a lot of that anymore. Any of that.”

 _I’m dying_ , Tonia tried out in her head. That wasn’t any good. _So, you know how Vincent Van Gogh liked to eat yellow paint?_ Nope. _I might have done something stupid, Pep, oh God, I’m scared, I can’t think my way out of this._

“You’re my family too,” Pepper said, and she was already glassy-eyed, and Tonia couldn’t do this.

“I’m going to figure out a way to make your life easier. Have you hired yourself an assistant yet? Who’s getting your dry cleaning? Someone should be getting your dry cleaning for you.”

“Do you want to make my life better?”

“Yes,” Tonia said, folding her hands in her lap and leaning forward in earnestness.

“Really?”

“Absolutely, Peppa Longstockings.”

“Don’t crash any more racecars, then, okay?”

“Okay,” Tonia said, her voice rasping in her throat. Eve made a quiet noise in the seat across from them. “If something did happen to me, you’d make sure someone kept an eye on Eve, right?”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you, boss,” Pepper said, and then she took Tonia’s hand and squeezed it bloodless.

“Not your boss anymore,” Tonia said, and winked.

She was going to have to tell Pepper soon. But not right now. Later. It would be better to tell her later.

 

* * *

_You thought I’d miss you submitting an exhibit from_ Justine _Hammer?_ Tonia screams into the phone. _Get Hammertech out of my feminist expo, you fucking creep, if you don’t want the public to know what your female employees have to say about you._ Afterwards, Pepper takes Tonia’s business phone and locks it in a drawer in her office.

* * *

 

“Does everything you own say Air Force on it?” Tonia asked, as Eve made herself breakfast in yet another Air Force tracksuit.

“Rhodey thinks he’s real funny,” Eve said, rolling her eyes in a private joke.

Tonia grabbed a bundle of wheatgrass out of the refrigerator. The chorizo-egg scramble Eve was making smelled a lot better than Tonia’s smoothie plan, but she was inching up past eighty percent on the cadmiumeter and it she didn’t have a solution yet. Every day she could eke out of her poor busted body was a chance for a fix.

“I like you, Rollins,” Tonia said, gathering a few more horrible green things and dumping them on the counter by the blender. “But you’re a real cipher. Tell me something about yourself.”

“I was born on the Fourth of July.”

“Ooooh, saucy, tell me more.”

“I think you’re keeping something secret from everyone,” Eve said.

 _Shit._ Tonia could play this off. She just had to not react. Years of reporters shouting the most disgusting rumors they could find at her was great practice. Tonia pouted dramatically. “Now, that’s not about you.”

Eve shrugged, obviously not buying it.

“I think _you_ have hidden depths,” Tonia said, circling Eve until she was close enough to stab her chest with one finger. “Now, I’m no expert, but people aren’t supposed to be able to just tear through chain link.”

Eve plucked Tonia’s offending finger away. Her hands were so warm. Tonia wanted to sink into them and never come back up again. _Not the time_ , Tonia reminded herself. “There was a gap,” Eve said placidly. “I just bent the wires out of the way.”

That was a grade-A verifiable bullshit. Tonia could fertilize a whole field of Stark SmartCrops with what just came out of Eve’s mouth.

“Mmmm-hmmmm,” Tonia said, and turned on the blender.

 

* * *

 

It hit Tonia a few hours before her birthday party. This was the last one. Suddenly, she didn’t want to spend the next hour alone. She needed a problem, something chewy and stubborn, to turn her mind to.

“JARVIS,” Tonia called, “where’s Eve? I want help choosing an outfit and she’s my only accessible girl friend.”

“In the gym, ma’am,” JARVIS replied.

Tonia put a call in to the gym. On the video feed, Eve was methodically destroying one of Tonia’s heavy bags. One of the ones Tonia had built to withstand getting pummeled by the suit. Somebody wasn’t who she said she was. Maybe the Air Force was getting in on the superhuman trend. Tonia wouldn’t put that past the military.

Eve in motion was beautiful.

“Ms. Stark, would you like to say something to alert your friend that you would like to see her? Or, perhaps, that you would like her to see you?” JARVIS asked, because Tonia had programmed in too much of Pepper’s personality when she made him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tonia said, quietly enough that JARVIS would hear, not loud enough to pass on to Eve. Then, louder, “Hey, Flying Ace, don’t mess up my gym.”

Eve dropped her fists and looked up at the ceiling for the source of the call. Tonia popped a video call up on the gym TV and waved. Eve turned to the screen, but kept looking suspiciously around the ceiling for cameras.

“I’ll turn it in for the night,” Eve said, waving a hand. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t,” Tonia said. She sounded beyond needy, that was embarrassing. If Howard couldn’t have a nice straight son to carry on his legacy, at least he could have a daughter with some emotional grit.

Eve stepped closer to the TV, peering closer at Tonia’s face. Tonia should have put on more makeup before calling down. She’d been waiting to figure out her outfit before she put on the face, and now Eve could see her bruised eyes and fucked-up skin in all their glory. All she was wearing was a cotton button-down, untucked from her slacks. If Eve was looking for slick poise, she wasn’t going to find it here.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure, I’m great. I need someone to look at me in several dresses and suits and pick which one is best for tonight’s birthday bash.”

Eve bit her lip, dragging her teeth across it. “Me? Everything I own says Air Force, remember?”

Tonia shrugged. “I trust you.”

_Sort of. After a fashion. On some things. More than you should trust me back._

 

* * *

 

Eve appeared at the door to Tonia’s bedroom fifteen minutes later, her hair damp around her shoulders. “Drink?” Tonia asked.

“You have a bar in your bedroom?”

“I’m very wealthy and eccentric.”

“No, thank you.”

“A double for me, then.” Tonia shouldn’t be drinking, not with the mess in her chest and the mess in her veins and the general mess she was liable to make of her life. Her short life. She wanted so badly to forget.

Rocks glass, ice, spirits. Tonia rolled the tawny alcohol once around the glass, then knocked half of it back.

Eve looked on, concern written plainly across her features. “Show me your outfit options,” she said, straight to business.

Tonia leaned against the sidebar, letting her body sag into a slouch. “Hush, give a woman a minute to pre-game. Tell me if I’ll look better in black or in gold.”

“Not black,” Eve said instantly.

“Good call. Black will make me look like a corpse.”

“That wasn’t what I—“

“Yes it was.” Tonia told herself that she didn’t mind Eve thought she looked haggard. She took another, more conservative, drink of liquor as Eve approached the bar like she was striding into a war zone.

“You look best in warm colors,” Tonia said. “Coral or something, draw out the summer in your skin. I should buy you something bespoke.”

“I think you should sit down.”

“I think you should—okay, I’m sitting down,” Tonia said, as she found herself leaning harder on the bar than she meant to.

Eve got her shoulder under Tonia’s arm and hoisted her over toward the loveseat by the window. Tonia had the feeling again of weighing nothing, utterly trivial compared to Eve’s strength.

When Eve went to put Tonia down Tonia grabbed her by the back of her t-shirt, dragging downward. “Sit with me,” she demanded, and Eve complied, settling in by her side.

Tonia felt like shit. She let her head loll back, just for a second, onto Eve’s shoulder.

“What would you do for your birthday if, maybe—you know—maybe you weren’t going to have another one?” Tonia asked, low and miserable. She was revealing too much of herself and it was hard to care.

Eve took a deep breath: in four counts, hold four counts, out four counts. “I’d tell someone what was wrong. I’d cancel that party.”

“No to the first option,” Tonia said. “Maybe yes to the second. I like having you here.”

“There are people who care about you,” Eve said carefully. “Pepper, Colonel Rhodes. Me, too, if you’d like.”

“Short list,” Tonia said, mouth twisting. That was good, honestly. Fewer people to grieve her when she died. Sure, there’d be magazine articles about the loss of a female role model in STEM. She’d trend on twitter. Iron Mantle action figure sales would spike. Justin Hammer would probably show up at the funeral. It would be horrible, but at least there’d only be a handful of people honestly hurting over it.

Eve pulled Tonia closer until it was almost a hug. “Tell someone, Tonia,” she said. _Tell me_ , clear as a bell.

Tonia turned her face towards Eve’s neck and breathed in deeply. Eve smelled warm, like fresh sweat. “I really, really don’t want to,” Tonia whispered.

Eve licked her lips. Tonia could feel her throat work beneath her cheek. Tonia’s crotch gave a promising throb. She felt good enough to do this.

“Did you know it doesn’t count if it’s with a girl?”

“Tonia,” Eve said, her tone starting firm with warning and tipping into a whine as Tonia scraped her fingernails from the nape of Eve’s neck to the top of her scalp, then fisted her hand gently in Eve’s hair. _Mmmmmm,_ Tonia thought, _leverage_.

Tonia pulled until she could see into Eve’s eyes without craning her neck too much. “I’m not a nice person, so this is going to be a trade. If you stay, I’ll take you apart and make you like it. If you leave I’ll go downstairs and see how high I can push my blood alcohol level.”

Eve swallowed. Tonia just about had her, she could tell. “You’re manipulating me,” Eve said roughly. Eve’s hair clung wetly to Tonia’s fingers. Damp, the blonde color darkened to sandy brown.

“Yep.”

There was a breathless moment while everything hung in stillness.

Tonia trembled on the edge.

“Then no,” Eve said. “I don’t do that.” She closed one hand around Tonia’s wrist and dislodged her hand from her hair.

Tonia stifled a disappointed sigh. She’d thought—damn. But Eve was still there, pressed into her side. _Come on genius, think it through._

New approach.

“Hm,” Tonia said, making a show of examining her fingernails. They were filed short and smooth, the way she liked them. It was ostensibly so she had maximum fine motor control in the workshop.

“JARVIS, I’ve had an emergency. A vague one. My aunt died, I have appendicitis, I don’t care, make something up. Cancel the party tonight, send everyone to The Terrace. Open bar, on me.”

“Of course, Ms. Stark.”

Tonia leaned back, letting her legs fall laxly open. Eve’s gaze tracked from the reactor down to between Tonia’s spread legs, and then guiltily flicked back upwards. Eve twisted her knees closer together. Tonia almost groaned with the desire to bury her face between Eve’s muscled thighs and _smell_ her.

“Same question, baby,” Tonia said, rubbing one thumb across her own bottom lip. “No strings this time.”

“I don’t know—how—two women? There’s no—“ Eve made an absolutely lewd scissoring motion with her hands, frowning in concentration, which would have made Tonia laugh if it wasn’t so painfully hot watching Eve and knowing what she was tactically working through out in her head.

“About like that, yeah. You’ll get the hang of it,” Tonia said, rolling her hips up off the couch and down again to demonstrate.

Eve hesitated again.

“Look,” Tonia said, dropping the overt seduction and rubbing her temples. “I feel like shit, and I want to forget and—and be with someone I like. I like you a lot. It’d be…nice.”

When Tonia met Eve’s eyes again they’d softened with sympathy. “Okay,” Eve said hesitantly, brows knitting together. Tonia held the eye contact until Eve went pink and her eyes darkened with want.

“Okay,” Eve said, firmer now.

“Okay,” Tonia breathed, then ghosted her fingertips up Eve’s thigh. Eve shuddered, her stomach muscles tightening under her shirt. She let out a shivery breath and looked to Tonia for reassurance. Tonia smiled at her and Eve’s mouth fell open, face glowing under Tonia’s approval.

This was going to be good, Tonia thought, as a tingle of arousal spun up through her fingertips and lodged itself firmly at the root of her clit.

“I could rub off on your quads, fuck.” She stroked up Eve’s leg, harder this time. “C’mere,” Tonia said. Eve came where Tonia tugged, falling basically into Tonia’s lap, and Tonia pulled their mouths together. Eve’s jaw was locked up, tense all over. Her eyes had gone wide, white all around. Okay, that had been too much, turn down the dirty talk, go slower.

Tonia rubbed soothingly across Eve’s sides, rucking up Eve’s t-shirt and letting it fall again. She tucked herself up close, letting her breath ghost over Eve’s cheek, hands wandering lightly over Eve’s sides, her back, the hard lines of her biceps.

“I’m bad at this,” Eve said, still stiff.

“No, you’re not.” Tonia hooked one thumb under the waistband of Eve’s sweatpants, tugging gently at the elastic. “You just need a softer touch.”

“I’m not supposed to be soft,” Eve protested.

“This can be soft,” Tonia said, and kissed Eve again, easy and exploratory. This time Eve relaxed into it, letting her hands fall heavily onto Tonia’s shoulders. Eve squeezed a little too hard—Tonia thought she might have bruises later—but she wasn’t going to tell Eve that. She certainly wasn’t going to tell Eve that she liked it.

Eve came back for more after the second kiss, copying what Tonia had done, and when Tonia let in a little wetness Eve returned in kind. Making out on the couch; Tonia felt like she was sixteen and getting PhD number one again.

When they were both properly breathless, Tonia grabbed Eve’s shirt by the back of the neck and pulled, stripping Eve down to her sports bra in one yank. Eve went to undo Tonia’s shirt next, and that—no—Tonia would rather not, thanks. She let Eve get two buttons open, just enough to bare the reactor core, then pushed Eve up and directed her towards the bed.

Eve didn’t even notice she’d been denied something.

Tonia sat Eve down on the bed. “I’m not taking that bra off for you, it’ll just get elastic tangled up in your elbows. Bondage is lovely but it’s better when it’s not so _ad hoc_.” Tonia bit this inside of her cheek, afraid that she’d spooked Eve again.

Eve just laughed and wriggled free of her sports bra, then laid back on the bed and stretched luxuriously. Tonia almost swallowed her tongue. Eve’s tits—her breasts, Tonia amended, on Eve they were breasts—were bigger than expected when released from the compression bra.

“Oh,” Eve said, watching Tonia’s face. “You like that.”

“Yes,” Tonia said. “Yes yes yes, a lot, yes.”

Tentatively, Eve palmed her own breast, lifting it and then letting it fall. Tonia stared, transfixed. “Do you want—?” Eve asked, waving vaguely at herself. Like it wasn’t obvious.

“Take your goddamn pants off,” Tonia ordered, already undoing her fly and shucking her slacks, underwear and all.

 _Finally_ , Eve was naked. Tonia crawled into bed over her and slid one thigh up between Eve’s legs and _oh Christ, she’s so wet._ Tonia groaned and dropped her forehead onto Eve’s sternum.

“Is something wrong? I’m not usually so messy, I’m sorry.”

“Jesus, no, who have you been fucking, I’m outraged on your behalf, don’t change a thing.”

Tonia got it together enough to turn her head and lay a biting kiss on the side of Eve’s breast. Eve responded by gripping Tonia’s hips and grinding upwards, so Tonia did it again, and again, until he top of her thigh was slick from Eve’s cunt.

It felt so _good_. Tonia’s mind started to slow down, fuzzing away the plans she’d been spinning just under the surface, packing them away for later.

Tonia was going to fuck Eve into the mattress, and then afterwards—she’d deal with afterwards when they got there.

Eve shuddered beneath her, eyes screwed shut, hips jerking. Tonia hitched herself upwards and kissed the side of Eve’s mouth, then her temples, first one side then the other. “Relax, let it happen,” she whispered. “I’m right here, I’ll give you another after if you want, shhhhh.”

Eve’s eyes flew open, unseeing, and she groaned, long and shaky. Tonia waited until she was almost through it, then sat back on her haunches and slipped a hand between them, pressing the heel of her palm ruthlessly against Eve’s clit.

Eve’s shoulders came off the bed with a shout. She curled almost in half, shaking and non-verbal, mouth a slack, wet smear against Tonia’s shoulder. Tonia smiled, deeply pleased with herself, and stroked Eve a few more times, letting her fingers glide all the way across Eve’s wet pussy, enjoying the way Eve bucked every time she brushed against her oversensitive clit. Finally Eve tapped out, two quick pats against the mattress, and Tonia let go.

Then she leaned back and surveyed her handiwork. Eve looked completely fucked-out, arms and legs spread out like a starfish, utterly unselfconscious. With a body like that, Tonia figured she didn’t need to be.

Tonia flopped down next to Eve, and was rewarded with Eve throwing a leg over her hips and propping herself up on one elbow to smile at Tonia. Maybe not as fucked-out as Tonia thought. Second orgasm still on the docket. Tonia wanted Eve absolutely insensate.

“What about you then?” Eve asked.

Tonia tried to think of a way to say _I want to come with my face in your fucking cunt_ that didn’t sound too alarming. _Let me eat you out and that’ll take care of itself._

“I’d like to use my mouth on you,” Tonia said. That was as appropriate as things were going to get. “And that will be…um…really nice for me.”

Eve drew in a huge breath and let it out like a bellows. “I’m going to need a minute.”

“That’s more than fine.”

Tonia pillowed her head on Eve’s shoulder and entertained herself drawing shapes on Eve’s stomach, tracing the outline of a new transistor array, then thinking through some joint designs for the armor, maybe something with spring-loaded hinges like a grasshopper.

Eventually Eve freed the arm that had been trapped under Tonia and used it to pull the back of Tonia’s shirt up until it was wrinkled around her ribs. Tonia allowed that; all the unpleasant stuff was on her front. Then Eve started methodically exploring Tonia’s lower back with her fingers, mapping out muscle groups by touch.

Tonia pressed her face into Eve’s neck and made an inarticulate sound that was mostly vowels.

“So, that’s—“

“Good, you monster, it’s good,” Tonia said, biting Eve’s ear as punishment.

Eve made a satisfied rumble deep in her chest. Tony felt it more than heard it, humming up her ribcage where it pressed into Eve’s side. Tonia decided it was high time for part two and let her fingers drift southward, tangling them in Eve’s light pubic hair, slipping her middle finger between Eve’s folds and testing how tender she was. Eve sighed but didn’t flinch, which Tonia took as a green light to scoot down the bed and get settled.

She got Eve’s knees hooked over her shoulders and it was perfect. Tonia always liked this part, cradled, about to engage in a task she was really excellent at. Tonia thrilled with satisfaction, rubbing her cheek against the delicate skin of Eve’s inner thighs. Tonia nosed closer, burying her face in the crease of Eve’s hip. She smelled amazing, tangy with a salt-spray bite.

A heel settled in between Tonia’s shoulder blades and applied insistent pressure.

“Pushy, pushy,” Tonia said, glancing upwards. Eve guiltily took her heel away. “I didn’t say you couldn’t be pushy,” Tonia said, and Eve returned, with her hands this time, running her fingers along Tonia’s hairline, smoothing one thumb over her brows. Eve was everywhere and Tonia was floating.

Tonia spread one hand wide across Eve’s stomach to feel her breathing and licked her from bottom to top, one long stripe. Then she ran her tongue up and under the hood of Eve’s clit, probing for her sensitive spots, before taking the whole thing into her mouth and _sucking_. Eve swore, and Tonia laughed even with a mouthful of Eve’s clit, because for all Eve’s buttoned-up demeanor she sure had come to Tonia via the US military.

Tonia spent a moment debating internally if it was worth it to use her other hand to get a couple fingers into Eve, or if she wanted to rub herself off instead. A quick check to Eve’s face assured Tonia that she didn’t need anything more complicated than Tonia’s mouth to focus on. Good to go.

Tonia’s cunt ached from neglect, almost prickling with soreness. It felt amazing to slide her fingers through her own slick folds, stroking her clit with the same rhythm as her tongue on Eve.

Eve’s hands pushed harder, pressing herself against Tonia’s nose and mouth, cutting off her air. Tonia breathed in hard through her nose and held it as long as she could, letting Eve grind as rough as she wanted against her face.

Tonia wasn’t going to last a whole lot longer with Eve’s thighs clenching around her ears and Eve’s breath hitching under her hand. Tonia didn’t let up against Eve’s clit, hitting the same spot over and over, listening to her hiss and swear and gasp.

Tonia hit her peak first, gasping against Eve, going clumsy while she shook through it. Eve looked down at her with wide eyes, mouth open in a voiceless, _are you?_

Tonia nodded, body still loose with pleasure, and Eve looked awestruck, so happy that Tonia’s busted heart wanted to break. Eve nudged Tonia’s head to the side, and Tonia watched Eve slip two fingers into herself, driving them in and out quickly one, two, three times and coming a second time with a sigh.

“Nice,” Tonia said, kissing the inside of Eve’s thigh one last time. “That was gorgeous.”

“Mmmmmphmm,” Eve said, shoving her face into one of Tonia’s pillows.

“Yeah, that too,” Tonia said, rolling off the bed and wobbling upright. The endorphins were wearing off fast, her body was reminding her that it felt bad, really bad, like maybe she was dying bad. Standing made her dizzy.

“Mmmm?” Eve lifted her head a little to track where Tonia was going, then slumped back again. Perfect.

Tonia gathered Eve’s hands into her own and kissed her gently on the knuckles, lingering on each one. Eve sleepily laced their fingers together while Tonia rummaged one-handed around in the nightstand, pretty sure that she’d left the thing she needed here last time.

“Sorry, Eve,” Tonia whispered, and slapped well-padded steel and leather cuffs around Eve’s wrists, threading the chain through the metal headboard and locking it.

Eve surged into action like a wild animal caught in a noose. She yanked on the cuffs, back arching off the bed in a violent echo of orgasm. To Tonia’s dismay, the wrought iron headboard bent slightly under the force Eve applied to it.

Tonia stepped back out of reach, where Eve couldn’t kick her, then walked unsteadily over to the bar.

“What the _fuck_ , Stark?” Eve shouted. She’d twisted her body until her feet were on the floor, and she was straining toward Tonia, violence written all over her face.

Tonia raised an eyebrow. Eve bared her teeth.

“I want to know,” Tonia said, leaning casually on the countertop in a way that let it take most of her weight, “why you’re here, and what you’re capable of.” Eve rattled the cuffs, chest heaving.

“So you tied me to your bed?”

“Trust me, this was the plan you were going to like the most. Now, information. Gimme.”

“Rhodes told me you’d give me a place to stay,” Eve said, each word dripping venom. “I needed somewhere between tours.”

Tonia snapped her fingers, _click click click click_ , shaking her head. “No, no, don’t think that’s the one. Try again.”

“It’s the truth,” Eve growled. Tonia scoffed, unconvinced.

“See, what _I_ think,” Tonia said, pursing her lips and tapping one fingernail against the arc reactor, “is that you should tell me how you’re strong enough to tear through metal. Or, of course,” Tonia twirled a hand, gesturing broadly to Eve’s predicament, “you can always pull those cuffs apart and prove my point yourself.”

“No.”

“Or you could tell me who you’re spying for?”

“No.”

“Suit yourself,” Tonia said. “I’m happy to leave you right there. Enjoying the view, actually.”

The color ran out of Eve’s face and Tonia felt bad, briefly, as Eve tried to tuck her knees up to cover herself. Then she remembered that Eve was bullshitting her, and between Justin Hammer’s crap, and Vanko, and organizing the expo, and her own stupid secret blood poisoning, she really didn’t need any super-strong spy fuckery.

“Why would I spy on you?” Eve growled.

“I’m the Iron Mantle,” Tonia said, because, God, wasn’t it obvious? Did everyone think she was thick? “People want what I have and I’m not giving it to _anyone_ , not the government, not the military, not a single fucking soul, and I want you to tell that to whoever you work for, okay? I want it branded on your forehead: Tonia Stark doesn’t share, end of story!”

“You’re—“ Eve started, but Tonia didn’t get to learn what Eve thought she was, because an explosion rocked the building.

“Great timing,” Tonia said wryly. “Nice chat, let’s pick it back up as soon as I deal with whatever this is.”

“Stark!” Eve yelled, but Tonia was already running for the door, as fast as her swimming head would let her.

“Stay put! The bedroom is the most reinforced room in the mansion, you’ll be safe.” Besides, Tonia was ninety-eight percent certain that Eve could handily bust free if things got hairier than expected.

“TONIA!” Eve shouted, voice cracking. “TONIA, DON’T!”

Tonia skidded out the door as another explosion shook the floor, scrambling as fast as she could toward the workshop. Tonia would get the suit. Eve would be fine. Whoever was shooting at her house would be sorry.

Great plan. No way it could go wrong.

 

* * *

Fucking Justin Fucking Hammer has drones. The Iron Mantle is better than anything made by Hammertech but the armor is only as good as the woman inside it, and Tonia is faltering. Her fingertips are numb and her heart is a lump of gristle, chewed up and spat back onto her plate. She’s been too distracted to check her cadmium level. _105%_ , the armor’s biometrics provide. _You’re fucked._

* * *

 

Tonia collapsed as soon as Vanko and last drone went down. Her knees went out on her, but that was okay, she was done. Absolutely cooked. Take her out of the oven and put her on a rack to cool.

Tonia’s body felt like a gallon of soup in a ziplock bag. She was leaking. That was fitting. There was blood in the back of her throat, and she couldn’t spit it out without lifting the face plate. Vanko’s electric whips had caught the armor around the left vambrace and heated it until it glowed; Tonia was pretty sure there was a third degree burn wrapping around her forearm under there.

Beside her, Vanko’s suit lit up with a small blinking red light.

 _Bomb_ , Tonia thought fuzzily. _Damn._

Tonia lifted heavy arms and armed the repulsors in her palms to jet herself out of the blast radius, and then the roof fell on her.

The chest of the armor creaked. Vanko’s blinking red light played a steady metronome in counterpoint to Tonia’s galloping heartbeat. There was a concrete pillar, at least two feet thick, covering her from neck to hip, and it was neatly pinning her so the useful bits of her armor were unavailable.

_Well, I was up shit creek already. Why not this too._

Something whizzed over her face and struck the concrete over her with a clear ring like a bell.

The pillar cracked, dropping dust onto Tonia’s faceplate.

A figure in red, white and blue leapt through the mess that used to be Tonia’s living room and knelt beside her, working their fingers under the beam and yanking. When it didn’t move, they hit it again with—with a round shield. A round shield painted with a star.

Tonia threw her head back and laughed, letting her heels scrabble against the rubble-covered ground. Here he was, her childhood hero and crush, Captain America. She was hallucinating away the last precious few seconds of her life, and it it was a _man_. She thought she’d get something nice, like Gillian Anderson pulling her off the red carpet and fucking her in the bathroom at the Globes.

“Hey!” Captain America yelled, right in her face. “Stay with me!”

“I’m having a better fantasy than you,” Tonia mumbled. Her speakers were shot, half garbled hiss.

“What—jeez, Tonia, get your arm free, pull!”

Tonia blinked when Captain America used her name. And, oh, hey, he was lifting a freed chunk of concrete up off of her, just enough to yank one armored hand free.

Might as well. The armor scraped horribly against concrete and rebar as she tugged it loose. This suit was going to need some serious TLC after this was over.

No, wrong. Tonia was going to die after this was over.

Captain America—hah!—grabbed her by the free arm and tore the rest of her out from under the rubble. Tonia was grateful for the armor, because otherwise she’d be looking at a grisly dislocated shoulder.

Then he scooped her up in an awkward fireman’s carry and sprinted towards safety. _Strong. Really strong, wow._

The good Captain threw himself through Tonia’s doorway and into a waiting helicopter. Tonia was starting to doubt her hallucination hypothesis, on the basis that this was getting protracted and it was uncomfortably vivid. The throb of chopper blades made her head pound.

Tonia licked blood off her lips. It was already drying, stubborn and flaky. “My house is about to blow up,” she said, cranking the volume of her abused external speakers as loud as they would go, hoping someone could hear her over the noise.

Captain America nodded and shouted something into his headset, and the helicopter peeled away just in time to clear the concussive blast of Vanko going boom.

Careful hands landed on Tonia’s faceplate. Tonia tried to push them away. She looked awful under there, and the suit was nice, everyone agreed that her suit was wonderful. Captain America’s mouth moved, inaudible, but from his expression under the cowl he wasn’t going to put up with protests. She subsided, and her helmet was wrenched off her head.

A headset was unceremoniously clapped over her ears, muffling the roar of rotors. That was much better. She could also hear the other people in the helicopter.

The pilot was a squared-off blond man in a purple vest, which was ridiculous but, whatever, Tonia flew around in candy-apple red and gold. In the co-pilot’s eat next to him was a black guy in a sweet trench coat, and then there was Captain America in the back with her.

“No concussion,” Captain America relayed to the front.

There was something weird about Captain America, familiar-weird, not just childhood-superhero-weird. He was really pretty, Tonia thought. Maybe this real-life Captain America was gay and had a solid skin care regimen.

“God, Tonia, don’t _do_ that again,” he was saying, distorted over the comms.

Tonia narrowed her eyes. It was going to come to her in a second.

Ah, there it was.

“You’re—you’re _Eve._ ”

Captain America made a face.

“Eve Rollins—Steve Rogers—oh _fuck you_.”

Morpheus in the front row laughed, one dry _hah_. “She was going to figure that out eventually. Captain America’s not our best undercover agent.”

Eve coughed into one red glove.

“I’m going to _kill_ Rhodey.”

Mr. Purple Vest tossed something that looked like an EpiPen towards Eve, who caught it handily. He grumbled into the mic, “Just jab her already, I’m not flying and listening to a lover’s spat at the same time.”

“Hey, no! Hey!” Tonia said, twisting away, but Eve was _fast_. She got the needle into Tonia’s neck, and Tonia didn’t even have time to accuse her of assault before the sedative hit her like a truck.

 

* * *

Nick Fury has an initiative and a temporary antidote and a box of Howard’s stuff. He tells Eve she’s staying with Tonia to use her knowledge of Howard to help. Eve says _no_. Tonia says _fuck you, no_. A bland little man says _I have a taser and I’m willing to use it._

* * *

 

“I’m under…house arrest. Wow. Under house arrest with Captain America, who’s a woman, who I chained to my bed not twelve hours ago. How is this my life?”

Eve carried the last box of Howard’s possessions into Tonia’s workshop. The bots were a little rattled, but Hammer’s drones and Vanko’s fun exploding surprise had largely left the workshop unscathed. Fury had turned over a bunch of Dear Old Dad’s cool classified possessions before kicking Tonia out of his shadowy headquarters and back to her ruined house.

Tonia cinched her robe tighter around her waist. It was the musty paisley one, reserved for when she was feeling maximally petulant. This was a great morning, one of the best.

“Set up that screen over by the Audi,” Tonia ordered, pointing to Eve and then pointing vaguely over to her row of beloved cars. The leather seats would be the most comfortable thing in the workshop. “Welcome to a front row seat to my daddy issues, _Captain Rogers_.”

Tonia twisted her left hand, feeling the skin pull at the nasty blistering burn that wrapped like a snake around her forearm. She’d figured out shortly after the unpleasant helicopter ride where the blood in her throat was coming from: an impact to the helmet had bashed her teeth against the inside of her cheek and left cuts all up and down her mouth.

Tonia wriggled her tongue against her molars just in case, checking for loose ones. Seemed fine. Score one for keeping her pearly whites another day. Anyway, the mouth was the fastest-healing part of the body.

Eve hadn’t moved, just crossed her arms and frowned. She was still in most of the Captain America uniform, chest bound flat, shoulders bulked out by layers of kevlar. The cowl was off at least; Tonia could see every stubborn line in Eve’s face.

“It’s the white one with black detailing,” Tonia said.

Eve grunted assent.

“Projector and shit’s in that box you carried in and dropped in the middle of my workshop.”

That didn’t incite any movement from Eve either. A muscle jumped in her cheek, and that was a it.

Tonia stalked around to face Eve and clapped her hands together right in front of her face. Eve startled, then glared. “Newsflash, Captain. One of us is a technological genius who can build her way out of anything, and one of us is _really really strong_. We can both be useful right now! I’m going to apply my intellect, and you’re going to lift heavy things for me.”

Eve took a deep breath, jaw locked in anger, and then blew it out. “Fine.”

“Good!” Tonia chirped, tilting her chin up and smiling without showing any teeth. “That wasn’t so hard.”

Eve flexed her hands like she wanted to punch something, then walked stiffly over to pick up the boxes Tonia indicated.

There was a lot of junk in Howard’s secret effects. Letters, Captain America memorabilia, bits and pieces of transistors, laboratory notebooks. Tonia was most interested in the video. She thought—this was stupid—she thought maybe there’d be something more to Howard, when he was talking to a camera instead of to his family.

So Tonia sat back in her expensive car and went through the reels one by one. There was a fair amount of boring b-roll. Tours of Stark Industries workshops, hours-long interviews that had been cut into pithy segments for the news, too dull to take in actively. Tonia flipped through a stack of Howard’s blueprints and half-listened.

Eve stood ramrod-straight next to the projector, replacing each reel of film as it ran to the end.

Some of the film was older, taken, surprisingly, from the super soldier program that made Eve. Howard had been involved with that—he’d never let Tonia forget it—but most of this didn’t feature him directly. Tonia put the blueprints down to watch.

A scrawny version of Eve, frail and narrow-shouldered but with the exact same stubborn face, stood in front of a height chart in her underthings. She coughed and it shook her whole body.

Then a more familiar bulky version, over a foot taller in front of the same chart, smiling uncomfortably.

Tonia learned forward, resting her right forearm against the steering wheel and propping up her chin. When she glanced over at Eve, Eve looked away, gaze jumping to the screen in front of her, then back to Tonia, then finally at the concrete floor.

There were more tests on Eve’s enhanced body; Tonia watched Eve curl eight hundred pounds, and then leap from a stand-still over an eight foot fence. One reel had several shots of Eve dressed up in her male persona, trying out different voices, shifting uncomfortably in her boots as she received suggestions. It was clear from her face that she was against the entire idea.

The most interesting of the older footage was of an older German man with round glasses. Eve made a small pained noise at the sight of his face.

He explained to the camera in an earnest voice that the serum would only work on women.

“The second X chromosome, carrying extra hereditary material within every cell of the female body, is essential to my enhancement. In the normal cell, this material is turned off, but upon the addition of my serum and the Vita-Rays, we can activate the chromosome, transforming the subject into the peak of humanity.”

Unfortunately, that was the only video of the German scientist.

“Doctor Erksine,” Eve said, when Tonia grumbled about not having any more information from him. “His name was Erksine.”

Blindly, Eve picked another reel. It fired up with a grainy video of Howard, young and grinning smugly, then flipped around to show a group of laughing soldiers, leaning on a Jeep. In the front was a beautiful, put-together woman with perfect curls and dark lipstick.

Eve’s face froze, and her breath went fast and shallow. She fisted one hand in the neck of her uniform, tugging it away like it was constricting her airway.

She looked like she was seeing ghosts.

“Switch it out, this isn’t useful,” Tonia said. Eve didn’t move. “Eve, kill the clip,” Tonia ordered.

Eve shuddered and stopped the film. The people she was laughing with on film were—God—they were probably all dead. It had been a long time, and there’d been a war.

“Let’s watch something different,” Tonia said, and Eve nodded jerkily.

“Here’s one that says _Expo 1975_ ,” Eve offered.

“Sure, fire it up.”

It was just Howard giving a calculated, practiced spiel about technology and the future. Safe territory for Eve, and Tonia could handle Howard. Tonia flipped open another of Howard’s old lab notebooks while it played, trying to pry an answer out of his hurried cursive.

The video caught her attention when she heard Howard snap in a familiar tone. There she was, about five, picking up a replica of Captain America’s shield and swinging it around, narrowly missing putting a dent the dark wooden desk nearby. “Maria, get her out of here. Tonia, that’s not a toy for girls, put it down.”

 _You knew_ , Tonia thought, the thought like acid on her skin. _You knew the entire time it was Eve Rogers under the cowl, and you still—_

Howard kept speaking into the camera, blowing the take and starting again from the beginning.

_Fuck you, Dad._

Tonia felt cold and numb, too furious to move as the tape played out. A few feet away, Eve looked almost as bad, locked in her own trauma from the forties.

“Tonia,” Howard said on the screen, so direct and personal that Tonia almost startled out of her seat. “You’re too young to understand this, so I thought I’d put it on film.” He had never talked to her like that, with gentleness verging on pride.

 “I’m limited by the technology of my time, but you, you’ll be the one who figures it out. _You_ will be what completes my vision of the future. What is, and always will be, my greatest creation…is you.”

A great big ball of something unidentifiable split open in Tonia’s chest and seeped through her like an oil spill. Pleasure at being the subject of her father’s praise, finally, some hint of approval from the bastard. Then more anger, because it wasn’t fair. Howard just assumed that Tonia would pick up his goddamn legacy, the blood-soaked history of Stark Industries, follow in his cold, alcohol-tinged footsteps. Then it curled back into self-satisfaction because he was right—she was better than him, she made herself _better_ , and she never needed Howard to tell her that.

Horribly, Tonia felt tears building in her throat. She hated it; hated feeling like a girl when she cried, hated that Howard _still_ had this much control over her.

Tonia kicked the car door open and stumbled out, head swimming from standing up too fast, the only thought in her head to _get away_.

“What is it?” Eve asked, her own voice rusty.

“I need—I’m going.”

Tonia bolted from the workshop, furious and miserable. The lightheadedness got abruptly worse as she hit the stairs. About four steps up Tonia’s knees gave out under her and she went down inelegantly. Her burnt arm hit the bannister as she went down, and she shouted in pain.

“Tonia!” Eve yelled.

She didn’t even try to get back up, just rested her forehead against the cool steps and wished she could dissolve like gold into cyanide.

Then Eve was behind her, big and warm and worried. She got both hands under Tonia’s armpits, hefting her like a rag doll to check her eyes. _Not concussed_ , Tonia thought. _Just clumsy._

“Tonia? Are you okay?”

“It’s not great, slugger,” Tonia gasped, pissed at her body, pissed at Eve for being so much stronger than she was, and pissed in general. “Do you have more of that antidote crap?”

Eve nodded and scooped Tonia up completely in a bridal carry, one arm under her shoulder and one under her knees. Tonia tucked her face into Eve’s neck and didn’t cry. It was all hitting her too hard. The stuff with Howard was swirling around her head like a snow globe of daddy issues. Tonia hated being such a stereotype. What she honestly wanted was for Eve to tuck her into bed and stroke her back and tell her it was going to be okay. That ship had sailed out of the harbor, hit a reef, and sunk when Tonia handcuffed Captain Fucking America to her bed. Or maybe it sank when Eve showed up, lying about everything, and acted like she needed Tonia to take care of _her_.

Tonia thought back to Eve’s face, watching herself and her war friends grinning into Howard’s camera, and felt bad. Lies about identity aside, Eve probably did need to have somebody looking out for her.

Eve got Tonia all the way back to the convertible and tucked her into the driver’s seat. Then she dug into one of her uniform pouches and pulled out another super-special EpiPen.

Eve gently tipped Tonia’s head to the side, baring her neck.

“Is this going to knock me flat on my ass again?”

“No. No sedative in this one,” Eve said. “Gonna hurt though.”

Tonia dug her fingernails into her thigh in anticipation, but Eve paused and gathered Tonia’s hand up in her free hand, squeezing hard. Then she jabbed the needle into Tonia’s neck. Tonia swore viciously for fifteen solid seconds.

“Better?”

“Yeah,” Tonia said, not letting go of Eve’s hand. Some of the dizziness faded away. She pulled the neck of her robe open farther and some of the unnatural grey bruising had receded as well. “How often am I going to need those?”

Eve shrugged. “Every twelve hours, maybe. Frequently enough to keep you upright.”

“These are going to stop working pretty soon, aren’t they?”

“Probably.”

“Great.” Reluctantly, Tonia dropped Eve’s hand. “I want to eat my weight in Thai food. You want some? You want some. JARVIS, buddy, get us some of everything from that place I like. And extra plum sauce, I could drink that stuff.”

“Can you walk upstairs?” Eve asked.

Tonia thought about lying and decided not to. Asking Eve to carry her more was manipulative, pathetic and bad. Eve was still there, hovering, close enough that Tonia could easily have reached out and traced the white star on her chest.

“Give me an arm to lean on and I’ll be fine,” Tonia compromised.

The arm to lean on became more of a load-bearing half-hug by the time Tonia was most of the way up the stairs, but Tonia didn’t mind. Her robe was slipping open, baring her chest down to her solar plexus. Eve kept stealing glances downwards, so Tonia didn’t bother cinching the belt all the way closed again.

Eve’s palm on her hip was broad and warm. When Tonia’s hand slipped from settled chastely over Eve’s shoulder to dangling loosely against her collarbone, Eve sucked in a shallow breath and didn’t comment.

 

* * *

 

Tonia slept for thirteen hours and woke up sleep-fogged and sore. Her mouth felt better, her arm felt worse. Whatever had possessed Fury to delegate “medicate Tonia Stark” to Eve instead of giving Tonia the privilege of injecting herself was a serious thorn in Tonia’s side.

When she lifted her hands to wash her face and apply makeup—she’d be damned before letting Eve see the dark circles under her eyes again—they shook, a constant low-level tremor.

JARVIS informed Tonia that Eve was in the gym.

Tonia gave up on the struggle to choose an outfit that would make her both alluring and comfortable and chose sweatpants, a bra, and another robe. This robe was heavy floral brocade, lined inside with soft silk. It felt good against her skin, and didn’t catch on her bandages. Warm, too. The air conditioning was cold on her skin, even though she’d had JARVIS turn it warmer last night.

In the gym, Eve was flinging the Captain America shield—her shield, Eve was Captain America, that was going to be weird forever—around the room.

The room rang like a cathedral with the sound of the shield striking Tonia’s walls.

She let it fly like a discus, putting her whole body into it, grounded in her hips. Tonia licked her lips.

Eve caught the shield with practiced ease, then slung it again. She’d left crescent shaped gouges all around the room. From the set of Eve’s shoulders, she needed to take the edge off somehow, and Tonia’s house was the victim.

Something was weird about the angles. The shield always flew back to Eve’s hand, no matter what direction she threw it, and it wasn’t losing momentum at all. It looked like it sped up on each ricochet.

Tonia coughed and Eve turned to look at her, catching the shield blind.

“That thing doesn’t obey the laws of physics, you know.”

“You’re awake.”

Tonia spread her hands, turning like she was at the end of a catwalk, giving Eve an all-around view. It made her dizzy and she had to put one hand on the weights rack to stay steady. “I’m here to grace you with my presence, and also request that you stab me with the good stuff before I go back downstairs to confront my father’s history again.”

Eve produced the magic jabby pen out of a pocket. Tonia flinched away from it as Eve pressed it to her neck; the damn thing hurt, and her body was learning to anticipate the injection.

“Hey, shhhh,” Eve said, soft and easy like she was talking to a skittish horse. She stroked Tonia’s back and Tonia tried not to melt embarrassingly into the touch. Not the time. Probably not the time ever again.

“Give me your magic frisbee,” Tonia demanded. “I want to distract myself with its defiance of angular momentum.”

Eve handed it over.

Tonia flicked the edge with a fingernail. It sang a clear tone. “What is this stuff anyway? Some alloy?”

“Vibranium and adamantium,” Eve said, nose scrunched up adorably as she relayed the fact, like she was pulling it up from a flashcard.

“The fuck are those supposed to be?” Tonia asked, throwing her hands up in affront at the nonsense words. Eve took the opportunity to stab Tonia in the neck while she was distracted. “Ow!”

“All done.”

“Thanks,” Tonia said, surprising herself by sounding genuinely grateful. “Can I take this down to the workshop? I want to hit it with an X-ray spectrometer.”

Eve tugged the shield out of Tonia’s hands like she was worried Tonia was going to hurt it.

“Non-invasive procedure, don’t worry. You can come down and watch if you want.”

Eve nodded, looking relieved.

Tonia knew she should be working on the arc reactor, but it was miserable and stuck, while this problem was shiny, new, and included an excuse to spend time with Eve.

Tonia had never managed to muster a lot of self-control around long-term planning.

 

* * *

 

“These aren’t real metals,” Tonia said, frowning at the spectral readout. “See, that—that shouldn’t happen.”

Eve spun the shield on one edge, then slung it comfortably onto her arm. “Seems real to me, Captain Science.”

“You’re a smartass, Rogers. There’s rules about these things, protons, isotopes, there shouldn’t be _new_ elements outside of particle accelerators. Any material with a nuclear weight this high should be exploding into a cloud of deadly ionizing radiation in about half a nanosecond.”

“As far as I can tell, it’s not doing that.”

Tonia poked Eve in the chest to demonstrate that she was _miffed_ by her continued backtalk. “When you’re ready to help instead of mouthing off, let me know.”

Eve shot her a shit-eating grin. Then she sobered, and Tonia dropped her hand, remembering all the weird energy between them. It hadn’t gone away just because Eve was in her workshop, smiling and joking and showing off her spectacular, iconic, impossible shield.

“I really used to want to be Captain America,” Tonia said, shuffling spectroscopy equipment out of the way on her workbench. “Having the real thing pretending to be Rhodey’s Air Force friend is weird, tell you what.”

“I was in the Army,” Eve said, suddenly vehement. “Not the Air Service. Fly-boys wouldn’t know a hard day’s march if it bit them in the ass.”

Tonia laughed, then coughed. “I’m telling Rhodes.”

“Hey, don’t! He’s nice. I see why you like him.”

“Rhodey is the best.” Tony realized something and her headache spiked, making her proprioception sway alarmingly. “I didn’t tell him I was dying. Pepper either. I meant to—fuck.”

“You’re not going to die,” Eve said, firm and gentle. Army recruits must have loved her, with that voice. That was a voice she wanted to believe in. “You’re real smart, Tonia. You can figure this out.”

“Not a lot of time left for that.”

Eve’s magic cadmium-chelating cocktail wasn’t stopping the constant tremor in Tonia’s hands. That seemed like a bad sign.

“You know,” Eve said, still in that coaxing, honest voice, “Howard helped make the shield. His notebooks might have some explanation for that science you’re so mad about.”

Tonia tried not to wince at the mention of Howard.

“He wasn’t a good father, was he?” Eve asked.

“He cared, in his way. He did his best, with all the things pressing on him. It’s not his fault I did my best to be a pain in the ass all the time.”

Eve shook her head. “Doesn’t mean he did it right.”

“It’s not a parent’s job to like their kids.”

Eve ran one hand over her face, then reached out and put a heavy hand on Tonia’s shoulder, gripping hard. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to sit down on this stool here, and you’re going to read that journal with all the terrifying jargon, and if you get through it I’ll let you feel up my biceps some more.”

Tonia coughed again and sputtered. “I do not—“

“Yes you do, you’re not subtle.”

“Captain America, are you making a pass?”

Eve raised one eloquent eyebrow. Tonia felt her face heat, just a little, at the memory of rubbing her cheek against the silky inside of Eve’s thigh. Her hand on Tonia’s shoulder was very warm.

“I’m still mad at you about the secret identity thing,” Tonia told her. “And the surprise about Captain America being a woman. My childhood crush on you made me thing I was bisexual for _years_.”

Eve laughed, a big loud bark that was well outside acceptable inside volume. Tony felt a surge of affection for her at the imperfection of it. Eve Rogers: chiseled adonis, paragon of American virtues, rude laugh.

“I’m still mad about being handcuffed to your bed during a missile barrage.”

“I was one hundred percent—ninety eight percent—certain that you’d be able to break out of those in case you needed to save my ass.”

Eve hummed in equivocal response.

“You agree with me.”

“Read your science, Tonia.”

 

* * *

In the very bottom of Howard’s possessions, there’s a vial filled with shavings of a silvery metal. _He is absolutely not supposed to have that_ , Eve says. JARVIS chimes to get their attention. _Ms. Stark, I believe this may be the compound we have been looking for._

* * *

 

* * *

_My hands are shaking, you have to help me cast the metal,_ Tonia says, and for a horrible moment Eve looks like someone else, face lit by the flicker of a forge in the dark.

* * *

 

Tonia clicked the new reactor into her chest. The steady glow was immediately comforting.

She paused, then scowled.

“I still feel like shit! That’s not fair.” She tapped the glass, annoyed. It did nothing but shift the housing in her chest, which hurt, so she swore. Changing out the reactor core always jostled the tissue graft scaffolds, and things were inflamed and sore.

Eve rolled her eyes and passed Tonia a glass of green smoothie sludge. “Give it a minute, Tonia. How does Pepper deal with you when you’re sick?” she asked the ceiling.

“I believe Ms. Potts has an excellent massage therapist,” JARVIS provided unhelpfully.

“Don’t—hey—don’t gang up on me, you two.”

“Captain Rogers asked me a question; it is my job to help in any way I can.”

“Supercomputing cluster, J. I’ll replace you.”

Tonia sat down heavily, only to be chivvied back up again by Eve and JARVIS, who wanted her to go upstairs, sit on a real piece of furniture, and eat solid food.

Tonia pointed out that Justin Hammer had destroyed her upstairs.

“That’s fine,” she said, waving a hand that still trembled. “I’ll go stay in a presidential suite in whatever hotel looks priciest. Room service. It’ll be lovely. Eve can go back to wherever they keep super-soldier spies in their down time.”

Something inexplicably sad and quickly stifled passed across Eve’s face. Then Tonia banged her burnt arm on the workbench and yelped, cradling it against her sore chest.

Eve brightened for some reason, before covering it with what looked like genuine concern. “You really shouldn’t be alone until you’ve healed up.”

Tonia took a gulp of her smoothie and took the moment to catalog what her body was doing. It wasn’t great. She’s been healthier.

“Pepper can’t come with me, I haven’t told her anything’s wrong. JARVIS could look after me but I can’t take him to the hotel. JARVIS lives in the house and the Iron Mantle, and while I _can_ sleep in the suit, I don’t like to. Not comfy. Starts to pinch in the cooch around hour seven. If I call Rhodey he’ll just yell at me, so—it’d have to be you, Eve.”

Eve nodded like Tonia’d proposed a good tactical strategy. “That’s settled then.”

“JARVIS, who has the best tiny little soaps in the area? Rhodey loves the tiny little soaps.”

“Colonel Rhodes does not like your gifts of complimentary hygiene products.”

“Yeah, but I like the face Rhodey makes when I tell him it’s a souvenir for him, and then he says it better not be soaps again, and then I tell him it’s not soaps—you get it. I love that face, JARVIS. I live for that face.”

“Indeed, you do,” JARVIS intoned.

“Give me the soap deets, dear robot butler.”

“JARVIS told me he’s not a robot,” Eve said helpfully. “He’s an AI.”

JARVIS made an electronic huff of satisfaction. Tonia couldn’t believe she programmed her house to sniff self-righteously at her, but that was the trouble with learning programs, they kept reacting to their surroundings. Apparently living with Tonia for a long period of time resulted in self-righteous sniffs. That hypothesis held up, actually, given Pepper as a second case study. Eve was coming along as a worrying possible third.

“I have made you a reservation at the Nobu Ryokan. You may check in at your leisure.”

“Thank you, darling,” Tonia sang, doing a small dance of victory. Then she almost fell over.

Eve grabbed her and set Tonia upright. She didn’t even comment when Tonia took the chance to grope her biceps and lean on her for a bit. “Let’s get you to your suite, Iron Mantle,” Eve said to the top of Tonia’s head, and she sounded like she was smiling.

 

* * *

 

“So,” Tonia said, throwing the hotel key card onto the suite’s coffee table and throwing herself down onto the couch, “spying on me. Doesn’t seem like your thing.”

Eve had insisted on carrying both of their bags up the elevator. Tonia had told her that was what bell boys were for, and Eve had insisted anyway, robbing some teenager of a generous tip. She stowed them neatly on the luggage rack in the corner. Tonia noted a large flat portfolio, which she expected carried Eve’s very expensive frisbee. The Captain America uniform was likely in there too.

That made sense—Tonia’s briefcase suit was tucked in among the luggage as well.

“How could you tell?” Eve asked, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand.

“You hate being Mr. Captain America. Not the hero part; the man part. The lying part.”

Eve shrugged one shoulder. “It’s fine. I can handle it.”

“No it isn’t,” Tonia said. She was really starting to think that the pretense Rhodey had given her, about Eve needing someone to check in with her and make sure she okay, hadn’t been entirely a fabrication.

Sure, it was a ruthless ploy to exploit Tonia’s weakness for vulnerable, beautiful women, but—still.

“Okay. It’s not fine. Happy?”

Tonia flopped over on the minimalist couch, hooking one leg up over the back of it and letting one arm dangle over the edge. “I can make you a version of that star-spangled-kevlar get-up that doesn’t have a binder in it, you know. Take out the shoulder pads, make the joints more flexible. Don’t tell me you can breathe properly in that thing.”

Tonia patted the back of the couch in a silent request. _Come sit._

Eve sat down and Tonia took the chance to throw her other leg over Eve’s lap. Eve folded her hands in front of her, resting them on Tonia’s knee.

It felt nice, this casual touch. Tonia felt her aches and pains ebb in response. Neurochemical responses evolution used to trick humans into bonding together in groups. Thank you, monkey-brain.

“Before—“ Eve indicated her body with a jerk of her chin, “—all this, I used to look like a walking one-by-four. They picked me ‘cause they thought they could pass me off as a boy real easy,” Eve said. “Didn’t go quite as they hoped.”

Tonia rubbed her open palm over the arc reactor. “I used to have a hell of a rack, you know. Shrapnel made a real mess of that; turns out cave surgery isn’t good for cosmetic accommodations.”

“Is that why you didn’t take your shirt off, on your birthday?”

Tonia laughed and nudged Eve in the stomach with her knee. “You can say naughty words in front of me, you know. I’ve had my face in your cunt.”

Eve went pink. “I have an image to maintain. Captain America doesn’t fuck, he makes love with nice ladies.”

“Eve Rogers, though—“

“Good job,” Eve said suddenly, interrupting. “You really neatly evaded answering my question.”

“I have practice.”

“You didn’t let me touch you.”

Tonia’s breath knotted up in her throat, and she sat up, untangling herself from Eve. She immediately missed the warmth. “Yeah. You noticed that, huh? I don’t—it’s not about you. It’s not even about vanity, I just. Don’t. Not usually. Not during sex. Not since.”

“I’m sorry.” Eve wrung her hands, almost like she wanted to reach out and was holding herself back. “Does it really not count if it’s with a woman?”

 _Jesus_. Tonia fucked this one up, absolutely and completely. Nice lesbians didn’t say shit like that to women who were just barely starting to come out to themselves. One night and Tonia gave Captain America a classic gay complex.

Tonia sighed. “Lots of people I sleep with feel that way.”

“It’s not true though, is it?”

“Not really.” _Not with you_.

Eve picked Tonia’s hand up off the couch, delicately, like she was afraid of crushing it. She could probably crunch all of Tonia’s metacarpals into dust, if she wanted to. It made the care more touching; Eve must spend every day holding herself back. “I don’t think I’d have been very good at it, but I wish I could’ve. If you’d been comfortable, of course. I’ve thought about what it would be like, if you’d wanted that.”

The blushing virgin thing was unfairly hot, Tonia had to admit. Trauma-hardened soldier with a gooey, gentle center, yum. Tonia caught Eve’s shy, hopeful gaze and immediately felt like an asshole for being crass in her head.

Tonia wouldn’t say no to a roll in the hay. Orgasms were nature’s painkillers. Maybe it’d be okay if it was Eve. Eve was an immensely decent woman by definition.

“We could have another go,” Tonia suggested, lowering her lashes, parting her lips, and letting out a barely-audible raspy sigh. She ran her thumb, light and tickling, over Eve’s knuckles.

“C’mon, Tonia, not like that,” Eve said, tugging herself away. “I don’t want the seduction thing.”

Tonia swallowed and went back to being sore and tired and not sexy. She gestured to herself, deprecating. “You want the unattractive version? It’s the consumer model. Lots of miles on it, too.”

“Yeah,” Eve said, rough and dark. “This version. The real one.”

“Fine.” Tonia resisted the urge to cross her arms over her chest to protect the arc reactor. “Have at it.”

Eve nodded once, like she was confirming the final step of a battle plan. Then she shuffled in close to Tonia and bent low, missing her lips entirely. Instead she kissed the upper curve of the arc reactor, so soft it didn’t even jostle Tonia’s aching tissue junctions. Tonia shuddered. Eve knew right where she lived.

Then Eve kissed Tonia’s clavicle, then her neck, then her jaw, less chaste each time. Tonia was gasping in earnest by the time Eve got to her mouth.

“Not good at it, she says,” Tonia whispered between kisses. “That’s nice, don’t stop.”

Eve ran her hands up Tonia’s sides, careful, tracing the tailored seams of Tonia’s shirt. “Would it be easier if I took mine off first?”

Tonia shook her head. The contrast between herself and Eve’s amazing, perfect body was hard enough when it was only in her mind. Eve kissed her again, smiling into it so Tonia’s lips and tongue slid against her teeth. Then Eve’s fingers were on the buttons of Tonia’s shirt, working slowly downwards.

Tonia expected to feel flayed raw, like she was missing her skin. Instead she just felt open, as if something fisted between her ribs had undone itself.

Eve eased the rest of Tonia’s shirt off, mindful of the healing burn on Tonia’s forearm. She got hung up on Tonia’s still-buttoned cuffs, unable to get them over Tonia’s hands, so they had to stop and go backwards. Tonia rested her cheek on Eve’s shoulder, offering up her wrists, unbothered. She didn’t have to be effortless. It was a new feeling.

Instead of touching Tonia’s messed-up tits right away, Eve bundled her into her chest, her shirt brushing Tonia’s bare skin. She stroked Tonia’s back, and Tonia melted right into her, embarrassingly undone. Eve murmured something, her tone wondering and inaudible.

Tonia licked Eve’s neck, retaliating against all the unearned tenderness. Then she bit down and sucked, working on a mark.

“Impatient?” Eve asked.

“Yes, always.”

Eve chuckled, then lifted her up off of the couch entirely, hands firm under Tonia’s ass.

Tonia yelped and wrapped her legs around Eve’s waist. “I can walk, asshole.”

Eve kissed her, unbothered. “I like carrying you.”

“Very hot, very butch, I appreciate it.” Tonia thought back to how many times Eve had carried her around in the past several days. “You’ve been enjoying all my injured swooning, haven’t you? That’s _cheating!_ ”

“No, I haven’t,” Eve said, laughing. “Trust me, I’m Captain America.”

“I’m the Iron Mantle, you don’t see me throwing my credentials around.”

“You don’t represent the stalwart values of our good nation, Mantle.”

Tonia kicked her heels against the backs of Eve’s thighs. “I am a symbol of massive individual wealth as a stand-in for heroism. I think that’s plenty American.”

“Stop that,” Eve said. “You get too inside your head, Tonia.”

“And you’re going to take me out of it?”

Eve blushed—Tonia loved that blush, she could get used to it—and hitched Tonia higher up on her hips. “Maybe I’m going to try.”

Eve set Tonia down on one of the crisp queen beds. Tonia took the opportunity to lay down, and then watched as Eve skinned out of her clothes. She did it like she was in a locker room, simple and unselfconscious. The only indication that she was about to get some was the way she kept sneaking glances at Tonia, poorly-hidden and wondering, as if she liked what she saw.

Tonia checked on her own chest. Still a scarred-up mess.

There was nothing marred on Eve. Now that Eve wasn’t touching her anymore, Tonia felt black uncertainty creep back up on her. She couldn’t do this, not without being in control, she was _bad_ at this part, this was why she didn’t let anyone see her.

Tonia’s legs were nice, though, people liked her legs, so she wriggled out of her pants, taking her underwear with them.

Eve _looked_. Her eyes were wide and blue and hungry, her lips parted, one hand rubbing absently against her own stomach like she couldn’t quite stay still. “Oh, _Tonia,_ ” she said, and Tonia braced herself for pity; it had been coming all along, she should have been ready. “It’s so much _better_ with you like this. I didn’t know.”

Then she was reaching out, half-kneeling on the bed, and her hands were on Tonia’s chest. She rubbed in gentle circles over Tonia’s nipple, the unscarred one, the one that was still sensitive, and Tonia found herself arching into the sensation. It had been so long since anybody did this for her she’d forgotten how much she enjoyed it. It felt like there was warm wax running down her midline, tightening and tingling.

“You’re—wow,” Eve said, and did it again.

“Mouth, c’mon,” Tonia panted.

Pliant and sweet, Eve dipped her head and licked Tonia’s nipple. Then, when Tonia pushed demandingly at her head, Eve opened her mouth and sucked, strong enough to pull all that was left of Tonia’s breast into her mouth. Tonia squirmed, gasping, but Eve threw one leg over her, holding her to the bed where she wanted her.

Eve pulled away with a slick pop, then did it again. Tonia sighed, then worked Eve’s ponytail free and buried her hands in Eve’s soft blonde hair, mussing it until it fell, tickling, across Tonia’s chest.

“Breathe, Tonia,” Eve admonished.

“ _You_ breathe!”

“Shhh,” Eve said, massaging Tonia’s hip.

Tonia wasn’t ready for Eve to be so kind. She wanted to get on with it, to the main event; Eve’s fingers were going to feel so good inside her. If it was this nice to have someone else’s mouth on her tits, she would like her cunt to get the same attention.

But Eve wasn’t having it. She kissed Tonia everywhere, scars and all, slow and gentle, until Tonia felt like all her muscles had melted. Eve had turned her into a desperately horny puddle.

Only then did Eve slide her fingers down, teasing around the edges of Tonia’s pussy, touching and exploring the outside as if she was mapping the terrain. Tonia felt impossibly slick and swollen, Eve’s spit drying chill on the skin of her stomach, her neck, and her chest.

Finally Eve got serious and pushed one knuckle up along Tonia’s cunt. She brushed Tonia’s clit and Tonia practically jackknifed off the bed.

“Ah, Jesus _fuck_ , Eve!”

Eve kissed her mouth, wet and deep and dirty, and then went after Tonia’s clit with single-minded determination.

Tonia writhed and kicked and swore but Eve was stronger than she was and held her down with one forearm like an iron bar across her pelvis. Tonia was going to give herself bruises from bucking against Eve’s muscles.

“What would you like?” Eve asked, even as Tonia bit her cheeks and tried not to choke on spit and pleasure.

“I want to sit on your _face_ ,” Tonia said, because she was stupid and greedy. Tonia’s sex-brain was not in top form.

Eve’s expression fell a little. “I don’t know how to do that, I’m sorry.”

Tonia flapped a hand, trying to dismiss the whole thing. “It’s not—this is good, it’s perfect, I’m going to come like a fifteen-car pileup if you just keep going.”

“But I could give you—your face when you thought about it, Tonia, tell me.”

Eve was cussedly stubborn; Tonia had almost forgotten. “Fine. I’d kneel with your head between my thighs and you’d eat me out. It’s a trust thing, a power thing.”

“Seems nice,” Eve said, eyes going far away as she imagined it and then returning, intent and dark. “Get up.”

There Eve went again, with the voice you had to follow.

Tonia propped herself up, hands braced against the headboard, and Eve laid back underneath her. She rearranged Tonia to her liking with confident hands, knocking her knees wider and wider until Tonia could feel Eve’s nose brush her cunt, breath hot between her legs. The warmth of it gave Tonia paradoxical goosebumps, pebbling all up her thighs.

Then Eve made eye contact with Tonia and licked her from taint to clit. Tonia’s thighs gave out instantly, but Eve held her up with strong hands supporting her ass.

After that Tonia gave up on composure. Eve wasn’t experienced but she applied trial and error with frighteningly swift results. She found that if she fucked into Tonia with her tongue Tonia’s head thudded against the wall in front of her, and immediately exploited the fact. Then she tested every spot on and around Tonia’s clit until she found one that made Tonia squeak.

When Eve discovered that she had serum-enhanced lung capacity, Tony’s eyes rolled back in her head. “I can’t, I can’t, Eve, please.”

Eve squeezed the meat of Tonia’s thigh reassuringly and didn’t stop.

Tonia’s orgasm rose like water behind a dam about to fail its stress tests. Pleasure soaked in under her foundation, loosening all her muscles, and then _pushed_ , increasing its intensity in pounds per square inch. Tonia bowed under the pressure of Eve’s mouth, farther and farther until all of her shear points groaned underneath it.

It peaked all at once, as Eve’s tongue moved faster, hitting the same spot over and over again. Tonia was a fault line: she slipped free in a catastrophe of kinetic energy. It rocked through her body, liquid and golden and wonderful. For a glorious moment, there wasn’t a single thought in her head.

Tonia fell over sideways in slow-motion, just cogent enough not to land on her burnt arm.

“Did I do good?” Eve asked, shit-eating grin plastered over her face. She was shiny from nose to chin from eating Tonia out. Tonia’s poor spent vagina clenched at the sight.

“Shut up.”

Eve laughed and flopped over on top of Tonia like a warm, heavy rug. “Thank you,” she said quietly, cheek pressed up against Tonia’s right boob.

“I haven’t done anything yet,” Tonia said.

“Yes you have.”

Tonia shut her eyes and let herself drift, anchored by Eve’s weight draped atop her.

Eventually Eve rolled off of Tonia and made motions like she might _leave the bed_ , which was unacceptable. Tonia grabbed blindly at her and got a handful of toned bicep. “You’re not going anywhere. I have stuff I want to do to you.”

Eve spread her hands. “If you say so. Where do you want me?”

Tonia pursed her lips, running through a long list of fantasies. She landed on something nice and simple.

Tonia laid Eve out on the bed, then folded one of her legs out to the side—the woman was unfairly flexible—and spread her open. She spared a moment to stare. Eve was wet and pink, full-on Georgia O’Keefe lush symmetry.

Tonia grinned and pressed a finger into Eve, hooking it forward and up. Eve sighed and rolled her hips into it, so Tonia added another finger and settled into a steady rhythm.

Eve’s chest hitched up and down, one hand twisting her own nipple, the other fisted in her long hair, all taut energy under Tonia’s care.

“You’re beautiful,” Tonia said, watching Eve’s breasts rise and fall, sweat shining in her cleavage, an already-fading love bite over one collarbone. Tonia hadn’t meant to say that. She could have said _hot_ , or _sexy_ , or _I’m going to masturbate to this for years_.

Eve smiled, hazy and genuine, looking down at Tonia through heavy-lidded eyes. “You are too.”

 _Not next to you_ , Tonia thought.

It must have shown on her face, because Eve cupped her chin and stroked one thumb over her cheekbone. “I’ve never seen anyone as _alive_ as you are.”

Tonia turned her head to the side and kissed Eve’s palm. At the same time she drove three fingers into Eve, feeling her open effortlessly. Eve’s mouth dropped open. “Mmmmm,” Tonia hummed. “Ready, baby?”

“Yeah,” Eve said, breathless.

Tonia had strong wrists and hands. It came part and parcel with being an engineer who spent a lot of time making custom metal fittings with a hacksaw and yanking on rusted-over bolts. She applied all of that to pounding Eve into the bed.

Eve swore and held on with a tight grip on the back of Tonia’s neck, pulling Tonia into a trembling arc over her. Eve felt amazing around Tonia’s hand, hot and clenching and intimate.

“I bet I could stretch you out until you felt like the only thing inside you was me,” Tonia panted in Eve’s ear. “You’d be full of my strap and my fingers and oh, _God,_ I’d come just from fucking you, just the rhythm of the harness rocking against me and the sounds you’d make.”

Eve moaned encouragement, her stomach muscles trembling, getting closer. “I’ll let you hold a vibrator to your clit, make you come again and again until you don’t think you can do it anymore,” Tonia said. “Then I’ll hold you down and eat you out until you squirt for me, one more time.”

“I want you to do it, Eve, come for me with only my fingers in you, come on my fucking hand.”

Eve came with a hoarse grunt, a burst of air forced out past her clenched throat, then accidentally kicked Tonia, hard, in the thigh. It was an ugly, visceral orgasm, completely without artifice. It was the hottest thing Tonia had ever seen.

Eve shook for a while after, riding out the aftershocks, eyes glazed open. Then she rolled over and curled into a ball, giggling. “Oh my God, Tonia, that was—Christ. Oh God.”

“Feeling good?” Tonia asked, curling up behind Eve. They were both sticky with sweat and Tonia couldn’t care. Tonia’s hand was a slick mess and her fingertips had wrinkled up like prunes from being inside Eve. When she showed Eve, it caused her to dissolve into giggles again.

“Don’t handcuff me again,” Eve warned.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Unless you asked. You can ask for anything; I have a lot of props back home.”

Eve pulled Tonia’s hand close to her chest, pillowing their linked fingers on her breasts. “Are we actually going to do all those things? The things you said.”

Tonia buried her face in Eve’s shoulder and groaned. “Sorry, I get—I get carried away. It’s just dirty talk. We don’t—“

“I wouldn’t be opposed,” Eve said, a little too fast.

“Oh, then, uh, yes. Definitely.”

“Okay.”

“Yep.”

“I think you should go to sleep now,” Eve said, throwing a blanket halfway over her. “You’re still pretty heavily poisoned.”

“For a bit, I guess,” Tonia allowed. “But I still want room service later. I must eat finger food in bed. It’s imperative, healthy even; I need energy for healing.”

Eve nodded, her breathing falling into a slow and regular pattern. Apparently Eve was going to lead by example. “If you say so, genius.”

 

* * *

 

Tonia woke up several hours later, thought about getting out of bed, and discarded the idea immediately. Eve was reading on a StarkPad, unbothered by Tonia’s face smashed into her side. Tonia watched through slitted eyes as Eve flipped through what looked like a mechanical engineering textbook in a minuscule font size. She turned pages faster that Tonia could read them—a lot faster. Huh.

“That’s some nice beach reading you have there,” Tonia said. “Relaxing.”

Eve ruffled Tonia’s hair. “I wanted to understand why you were giving yourself cadmium poisoning. This writing is deliberately obtuse, by the way. I expected better from you.”

“You’re reading my papers?”

“Yeah, sure,” Eve said, eyes flicking over a schematic that Tonia vaguely remembered sketching up in CAD during a heady all-nighter. “I’m not getting all of it, but the diagrams help.”

Tonia shoved herself farther upright. The sheet that had been covering her slipped down to her lap, and Tonia considered grabbing it and clutching it to her chest. But then Eve looked at her and smiled, and it seemed like too much work. Tonia felt lazy and slick, but overall her body felt better, tired in a normal human way instead of feeling like death was creeping in on her from the edges.

“In my defense, I was probably obfuscating on purpose,” Tonia said, squinting at Eve’s StarkPad to see which article she was reading. “I had to dance around some proprietary gaps in the methods section.”

Eve raised an eloquent eyebrow and then read one of Tonia’s less-than-eloquent sentences out loud. Tonia winced. “I was also on a deadline.”

They read together for a while, Tonia skimming along while Eve tore through fifty-odd pages of Tonia’s dense papers.

Tonia was a starting to debate the merits of getting up to get coffee versus having another nap versus propositioning Eve for another round when someone pounded on the door to the suite.

Tonia heard the familiar tones of angry Pepper coming from the hallway.

“Don’t come in, I’m naked!” Tonia hollered, tumbling out of bed and making a beeline for the closet where she remembered spying some terrycloth robes.

The door beeped—Pepper had gotten a key to her hotel room somehow, that was playing _dirty_ , very unfair, very crafty, exactly why Tonia hired Pepper in the first place but absolutely not nice right now—and Pepper stormed into the room like a leggy invasion force.

“Antonia Stark, I am—oh for crying out loud, Tonia, put on some clothes—“

Pepper raised a hand to cover her eyes, then did a double take and dropped it to take a proper look at Tonia. All the color drained out of her face.

“Tonia, what _happened?_ Your arm! God, Tonia, how much weight have you lost? Are you on drugs again?”

“No!” Tonia protested, flinging open a closet and finding no robe, shit. “I’m fine, it’s all resolved, I’m not even dying anymore—“ Oh, no, that was the wrong thing to say.

“ _Dying?”_ Pepper yelled.

“Not the salient point of that sentence—“

“How _dare_ you not tell me?”

“I had it under control, Pep! I didn’t want you to worry!”

“Well, that plan was fantastic, I can tell you that. I didn’t worry at all when I had to learn from the _news_ that the mansion was blown to pieces—“

“I do not have control over supervillains—“

“—and then these men in suits wouldn’t let me see you or tell me anything but that you were _secure_. Do you know how that was for me?”

“I was under a lot of stress, Pepper!” Finally Tonia found a robe and wrapped herself up in it, cinching it tight and crossing her arms over her chest.

“Tonia?” Eve asked, poking her head through the doorway and into the suite’s sitting room.

“And you’re fucking Rhodey’s friend? Seriously, Tonia. Seriously.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Tonia groaned.

“Is it? Really?”

“I’m going to—“ Tonia jerked a finger in the direction of the bedroom— “Just get Eve a robe.”

“Ms. Rollins, I want to have a word with you as well,” Pepper said, using the voice she applied to disappointing interns.

Eve shrank by about three inches. The Pepper Voice did that to everyone. “It’s Captain Rogers, actually. Sorry about the deception, ma’am.”

Pepper pointed an angry finger at Eve. “Do not call me ma’am right now, you.” Then she rounded on Tonia again. “You. Explain yourself.”

Tonia counted it out on her fingers. “Right. One, big glowy circle in my chest turned out not to be the best health decision I could have made. Two, Dad’s legacy included some guy with electric whips who wanted to kill me. Three, Captain America is alive, and a lady—surprise—and also was spying on me, weird. Good in bed, though. Four, Justin Hammer is a douche: not a surprise. Five, I met a cool dude with an eyepatch, six, I fixed the arc reactor problem and, seven, now you’re yelling at me. Simple.”

“I need to sit down,” Pepper said. She folded onto the couch like an elegant piece of origami. Not for the first time, Tonia felt a pang of regret that Pepper was straight. They could have made a go of it. Probably not long term, not when Tonia drove Pepper up the wall so consistently, but Pepper was amazing; Tonia would have tried, for her.

Tonia sat down gingerly next to Pepper. “I should have told you.”

“Say you’re sorry,” Pepper said, eyes frighteningly bright.

“I’m sorry.”

Tonia abruptly found herself with an armful of Pepper Potts. Pepper squeezed fiercely enough to make Tonia’s bones creak, just once, and then let her go.

“I quit as CEO,” Pepper added, then hit Tonia in the face with a chic throw pillow. “Jerk.”

“I probably deserved that.”

“Is Captain America seriously naked in your hotel room, Tonia?”

Tonia couldn’t help grinning. She probably looked stupid and didn’t care. “Pretty neat, huh?”

“It’s _something_.”

“Want to hear what an American icon is like in bed?”

Eve yelled from the other room, “No she does not!”

“I’ll tell you another time,” Tonia whispered. Then, at full volume, “Should we do brunch? Is it brunch time?”

Pepper sighed. “It’s almost seven pm, Tonia, but sure. Surely someone in this city will make you an egg white omelet.”

“Excellent. Eve! We’re getting food! Put on as few clothes as possible please!”

“No, Tonia,” Eve and Pepper said simultaneously, which was, Tonia supposed, predictable.

Brunch, Tonia decided, was going to be perfect.

 

* * *

Recruitment assessment for the Avengers Initiative: Iron Mantle, Recommended. Tonia Stark, Not Recommended. _In my defense,_ Eve says, sitting beside Tonia across the table from Nick Fury, _I wrote that report a week ago._

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed content notes:
> 
> This fic includes some references to the fear of sexual assault. Tonia lost her breasts in Afghanistan and has trauma surrounding that event, especially related to sex. Her thoughts about her impending death by heavy metal poisoning follow the same patterns as someone who is suicidal.
> 
> The first sex scene happens when Tonia has been drinking but is not drunk. She's manipulative about getting Eve to have sex with her, and has ulterior motives during sex. Afterwards, in a non-sexy context, Tonia locks Eve in handcuffs against her will.
> 
> Finally, I use the word cunt a lot in sex scenes.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[fanmix] bad girls do it well](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17522783) by [hopelesse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopelesse/pseuds/hopelesse)




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